Whether you’re using your Mac for school activities, office work, or personal use, protecting your valuable data is very important. Corrupted software, hardware failure, virus or malware infection, power issues, and other computer problems could easily damage your device and make it inoperable.

• Backup Mac Mini To External Drive
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1. Backing up documents, pictures, or any information stored onto your computer onto a flash drive is a secure way to make sure you don't lose important data.
2. Plug the drive into your Mac’s USB port. The drive should appear on your Desktop and in the Devices section on the left side of any Finder window. Drag the files you want to back up to the USB drive icon in either location. You can drag one file at a time or an entire folder’s worth of files.
3. Once your drive is ready, you can start creating your backup using Time Machine by following the instructions below: Connect your external hard drive to your Mac using USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt. Turn on Time Machine by going to System Preferences Time Machine. Toggle the switch from Off to.
4. Once Disk Utility has written the disk image to the USB, you may eject the drive by dragging it to the Trash. Since this example was a backup of OS X, it should be tested to confirm that the computer can be booted from it. Insert the drive and power down the computer. Hold the Option key and push the power button to boot the computer.

Click “Clone” to start the cloning process. The content of the USB drive will be overwritten and replaced with the clone of the boot drive. Booting from a USB Drive. Once you’ve installed macOS on a USB drive or cloned your hard drive to a USB drive, you will need to restart your computer and boot from the clone drive.

No matter how careful you are with your Mac, these problems sometimes still do happen and cause data loss if you’re not prepared. Creating a backup of your photos, work files, and other important documents gives you peace of mind knowing that all your files are safe.

There are several ways of creating a backup for your Mac, but this article will discuss the methods to back up Macbook using an external drive. We’ll show you the step-by-step process to set up your backup using Time Machine and other utilities.

Once you have a backup of your files, you no longer have to worry if you accidentally deleted your documents or when other computer disasters suddenly happen. Using an external drive to back up Macbook can help protect your files so you can get back up and running again in no time.

Preparing Your Computer for the Backup Process

Using an external drive to back up your Macbook means that your storage space is limited. Hence, it is important to determine which files you can and can’t live without. To minimize your storage consumption and make every byte count, delete all junk files from your computer using an app such as Tweakbit MacRepair.

Take note that the methods discussed below will only back up your data locally. To completely safeguard your files, you can also back up your data offsite or via cloud storage. This way, you have an extra layer of protection in case both your computer and external drive fail at the same time.

Backup Mac Mini To External Drive

This guide will discuss three different ways to back up your Mac using a hard drive: traditional copy-paste method, via Time Machine, and by cloning your drive.

Method #1: Copy-Paste Files Manually.

If you want more control over the files you want to back up, this is the easiest and simplest method. All you need to do is connect your external drive to your Mac via USB cable, then copy over all the files that you need.

This process takes a long time because you have to go back and forth between your external drive and your computer. The copying speed might also take a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the size of the files, type of port you are using, and the writing speed of your external drive.

This manual backup method is ideal for those who don’t have too many files to copy or those who want to do selective backup.

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Method #2: Create a Backup via Time Machine.

macOS has a built-in backup tool called Time Machine. This tool is available for Macs running macOS 10.5 and above. Time Machine is a set-and-forget backup system, where you just need to configure it once and it will work independently from then on, without you needing to check and manage everything.

Time Machine works in the background, saving copies of all your photos, music, videos, documents, apps, system files, and other stuff you want to keep a copy of. And when you’re out of storage space, it will automatically delete old files to make way for new ones.

For this process, you’ll need an external drive that is at least the same size as your internal drive. It’s even better if you could get one that’s twice or three times your internal drive storage space.

By default, Time Machine will use up all the storage space on your external drive. So if you are planning to use the drive for other purposes, make sure that you partition it into two volumes first before creating your Time Machine backup. This way, you can limit the amount of space you want to allocate for Time Machine and your other files. You can partition the drive by using macOS Disk Utility under Applications > Utilities.

Once your drive is ready, you can start creating your backup using Time Machine by following the instructions below:

1. Connect your external hard drive to your Mac using USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt.
2. Turn on Time Machine by going to System Preferences > Time Machine. Toggle the switch from Off to On.
3. Click Select Disk to choose which volume you want to use for your backup.
4. Choose your external drive from the list, then click Use Disk.
5. If you want to encrypt your backup, tick off Encrypt backups.
6. Time Machine will prompt you to reformat your drive if it is not formatted as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). This will erase all the files from your drive.
7. Click the Options button to exclude volumes from being copied to your backup.
8. Click OK to apply your changes and let Time Machine do its work.

Once your Time Machine is set up, it will then back up your files automatically every hour. It will keep hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all the past months.

To restore file or folders from Time Machine, just open Spotlight and type in Time Machine. You’ll be able to see previous saved versions of the file you are looking for. Just look for the version that you need, click the file to highlight it, and press the Restore button to copy it back to the folder where it was previously located.

If you encounter system errors, you can also use Time Machine to restore your entire system at once. To do this, hold down the Command + R keys while restarting, then release the keys when you see the Apple logo. Choose Restore from a Time Machine Backup and follow the on-screen instructions.

Method #3: Create a Clone of Your Mac.

If your disk is damaged, restoring via Time Machine will not work. You need to have a clone of your system, a full system backup of your device, to be able to fix your problems and boot into your Mac.

There are two ways to create a clone of your computer: using macOS’s built-in Disk Utility or by using third-party apps.

To clone your drive using macOS Disk Utility, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Finder > Utilities > Disk Utility.
2. Click on the Erase tab.
3. From the left-side menu, choose the volume you want to use as your backup drive.
4. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the Format type.
5. Click Erase and wait for the format to be completed.
6. Click on the Restore tab and choose the drive to be cloned by dragging it to Source.
7. Next, drag the backup drive to Destination.
8. Click the Restore button.

Note, however, that the clone created using Disk Utility is not a bootable one. You can use third-party apps instead such as SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable backup of your system.

Summary

The threat of data loss is something that’s always hanging over our heads. Creating a backup ensures that your data is always protected no matter what happens. You can choose from the various backup methods above to save your files based on your needs and preferences.

Almost everyone knows that backing up all of the files on your computer or any other device you have frequently is a good practice. You never know when your device, even if it’s reliable and secure (like a MacBook Pro), might fail, break, get lost or stolen. If any of these things happen it can be devastating but if you backup your data with an external hard drive, you at least have all of your files and other important information.

These days, backing up your MacBook Pro is easy to do and if you own one of these computers you should learn how to back it up and do it often. It can be as easy as a click of a button but we will take a look at all of the steps necessary to backup your Mac as well as some other information to consider during the process.

Why Backing up MacBook Pro to an External Hard Drive

The reasons to backup your MacBook Pro to an external hard drive are pretty obvious but if you are unfamiliar with the reasons, or with backups in general, you should learn about them. Backing up your computer basically means that you are making copies of all the important information found on your computer. This could be all of your photos, music, videos, files, and any other piece of data found within your MacBook.

All of this data exists stored and saved within the hard drive built into your computer but making a backup of these is a good idea for a couple of reasons. Your MacBook Pro is an electronic device and these devices can break or fail due to accidents or because of manufacturer’s defects. Also, because of the popularity and cost of Apple products, your computer might be a target for theft. Because of these possibilities, it is important to back up your computer in case any of them happen to you.

An external hard drive makes it really easy to back up your computer so it’s a good idea to purchase one and learn the steps to back everything up. Hard drives can vary in cost and storage capacity but even though they are an added expense, they are more than worth it in the worst-case scenario of a broken or stolen MacBook.

How to Backup MacBook Pro to External Hard Drive

The first step to backing up your MacBook Pro is to connect your computer to an external hard drive. Hard drives come in many different shapes and sizes but all have a cord that will connect the drive into your computer. Plug this cord into the corresponding input on your MacBook Pro to allow the backup process between the hard drive and your computer to begin. Depending on what model MacBook Pro you have and which hard drive, this cord could be USB, Thunderbolt, or Firewire.

When you plug the hard drive into your computer, a popup box should appear that will ask you if you’d like to backup your computer using Apple’s built-in backup program, Time Machine.

When you see this box above, go ahead and click on Encrypt Backup Disc and then the Use as Backup Disk button.

You can also open up the Time Machine settings manually if it doesn’t happen to appear automatically.

To do this go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of your screen then click on System Preferences and then on Time Machine.

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Once in the Time Machine box, click on Select Backup Disc to choose your external hard drive as the device to store the backup.

Click on the Use Disk button once you locate your external hard drive and your MacBook Pro will begin to back up your files.

If you turn Time Machine on and keep your computer plugged into your external hard drives, it will complete backups at scheduled intervals so you don’t have to worry about going through this process that often. You can choose the frequency you’d like backups to take place but having it set to automatic is an easy way to make sure your most current data is backed up.

Time Machine can automatically back up files every hour for 24 hours, once a day for a week, and weekly for previous months of use. The first time you back up your MacBook Pro to an external hard drive, it can take a long time. After this initial backup, it shouldn’t take as long and if you have Time Machine set up to conduct automatic backups, you might not even realize the backups are occurring.

Final Thoughts

Backing up your files from your MacBook Pro to an external hard drive is important and you should really consider doing it. It is a simple step you can take to easily recover important information in case of something bad happening to your computer and it’s really easy to do. The automatic backup feature on Time Machine makes things even easier and once you follow the steps above, your computer will be consistently backed up.

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There are many different options when it comes to choosing an external hard drive. The main thing to consider is how much storage space you need. I’d recommend getting at least a 1TB size hard drive and that should cover an average person’s files from their computer. If you want a smaller drive, 500GB might be enough but hard drives these days are pretty compact so getting one with a larger capacity is recommended.

Do you backup your MacBook Pro often? What size hard drive do you use?