If you read my previous post about how to format an external hard drive, you know that I bought a 2TB Seagate Expansion external drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk — one for Mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use.
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Here are the best Mac hard drives and external storage options in 2019. Find out which hard drive can help increase your storage or safely back up your Mac. LaCie Rugged Mini 2TB External Hard Drive Portable HDD – USB 3.0 USB 2.0 compatible, Drop Shock Dust Rain Resistant Shuttle Drive, for Mac and PC Computer Desktop Workstation PC.
One of the Best Gaming External Hard Drives For Mac Silicon Power Armor A60. The Silicon Power Armor A60 is a rugged and portable external hard drive that comes with 3 TB storage capacity, military-grade shock-proof body, cable carry design, USB 3.0 and is compatible with Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim. Best external hard drives and SSDs for Mac and PC 01. Western Digital My Passport 4TB. Samsung Portable SSD T5. G-Technology G-RAID with Thunderbolt 3. Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt. LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive 4TB. Adata SD700 External SSD. WD My Book Duo. Meet the Backup Plus for Mac Family. Slim is an easy way to protect and share your digital life. Ready to go with up to 2TB of storage space for your most important files, the sleek and protective metal finish complements your Mac laptop’s finish. Join the millions of satisfied customers with one of Seagate’s most popular and trusted portable drives. How to Format an External Drive in OS X. Connect the drive to the Mac. Open Disk Utility. The easiest way to do that is hit CMD and the spacebar at the same time and type in Disk Utility to find the program. Select the drive you want to format.
In this article, I’m going to show you how to backup your Mac data to an external drive. You should backup your Mac on a regular basis, especially if you’re planning to perform macOS updates.
I did this several weeks ago while preparing my MacBook Pro for the High Sierra update. You may also be interested in taking a look at the issues I encountered during that process just in case you also want to upgrade your Mac to the latest macOS.
Please note that the backup tool that I used is Time Machine, a built-in app provided by Apple. If you want to backup your Mac data without using Time Machine, there are also alternatives worth considering.
Where is Time Machine on Mac?
As I said, Time Machine is a built-in app within macOS ever since OS X 10.5. To find it, click on the Apple logo on the top left corner of your screen, then select System Preferences.
In the Preferences Pane, you’ll see the app located between “Date & Time” and “Accessibility”.
What does Time Machine Backup?
Time Machine is definitely the easiest way to backup Mac. In addition, the app is created and recommended by Apple. Once you have a timely backup, it’s incredibly easy to restore all or part of your data in case of accidental deletion or a hard drive crash.
So, what kind of data does Time Machine backup? Everything! Photos, videos, documents, applications, system files, accounts, preferences, messages, you name it: They all can be backed up by Time Machine. You can then restore your data from a Time Machine snapshot. To do so, first open Finder, then Applications, and click on Time Machine to continue.
Be aware that the recovery process can be only be conducted when your Mac is bootable.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Backing up Mac to an External Hard Drive
Note: the screenshots below are taken based on macOS 10.12.5 Sierra. If your Mac has High Sierra or an older version, differences may exist, but the process should look similar to what’s displayed below.
Step 1: Connect your external hard drive.
First, use the USB cable (or USC-C cable if you’re on a newest Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports) that comes with your external drive to connect that drive to your Mac. Once the disk icon shows up on your desktop (if it doesn’t, open Finder > Preferences > General, and here make sure you’ve checked “External disks” to let them show on the desktop), move on to Step 2.
Step 2: Select the disk for backup.
Now open Time Machine (I tell you how above) and select the disk you want to use. I have partitioned my Seagate drive into two new volumes, “Backup” and “Personal Use”, as you see from the screenshot. I chose “Backup”.
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Step 3: Confirm backup (optional).
If you have used another disk for backup before, Time Machine will ask you whether you want to stop backing up to the previous disk and use the new one instead. It’s up to you. I selected “Replace”.
Step 4: Wait until the process is complete.
Now Time Machine will start to backup all your data. The progress bar gives you an estimate of how much time is left before the backup is complete. I found it a bit inaccurate: Initially, it said “About 5 hours remaining”, but it only took two hours to finish. It’s worth noting that the remaining time may vary from case to case depending on the write speed of your external hard drive.
It says I have to wait 5 hours
After about an hour and a half, it says only 15 minutes remaining
Step 5: Eject your external drive and unplug it.
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When the backup procedure is completed, don’t rush to disconnect your device as this could cause potential disk problems. Instead, go back to the main desktop, locate the volume that your external hard drive represents, right-click and select Eject. Then, you can safely unplug the device and put it in a safe place.
One More Thing
Like any other hardware device, an external hard drive will fail sooner or later. It is advisable to make a copy of the data on your external drive — as they say, a “backup of your backups”! One good option is to use cloud storage services. I now use IDrive (read our full review here), and I really like it because the app is so easy to use, and it also allows me to back up my Facebook albums and photos automatically. Backblaze and Carbonite are also popular options in the market, though I have yet to give them a try.
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I hope you find this tutorial helpful. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of data backup these days, especially when my mid-2012 MacBook hard drive died all of a sudden. I’ve also seen cases where my friend’s computer and hard drive failed. You can imagine their desperation. Without a proper backup, it’s really hard to restore data. Although you could try a third-party recovery program like Prosoft Data Rescue and Stellar Mac Data Recovery, chances are they won’t get all your lost data back.
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Anyway, the main takeaway I want you to have from this article is this: Backup your Mac with Time Machine and create a second or third copy of those backups if you can.