How to backup my macbook to an external hard drive

Things You Should Know

You can back up a Mac without Time Machine by using an external drive.
Connect your external drive with the USB. Depending on your Mac model, you may need to buy an adapter.
You must format your hard drive to prepare it for back ups.

Table of Contents Show

Things You Should Know
About This Article
Is this article up to date?
How do I backup my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive without Time Machine?
How do I backup my Mac onto a hard drive?
What is the best way to backup Mac?
How do I backup my laptop to an external hard drive?

1
Buy an external hard drive. Since you'll be using the external hard drive to back up your entire Mac hard drive, the drive should be bigger than your Mac's drive (e.g., if the Mac's drive is 256 GB, get at least a 500 GB external drive).[1]
- It's often not much more expensive to buy a 1 terabyte (1024 gigabyte) external hard drive than it is to buy a 500 gigabyte external hard drive, so consider spending the extra $20 or so to get more storage.
- You'll generally want to buy an external hard drive that both has enough space for you and comes from a reliable manufacturer such as Western Digital or Seagate.
- If you don't have an external hard drive, you can also use a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive.[2]
- You may also try a cloud storage site, such as iCloud, Google Drive, or Dropbox.[3]
2
Plug your external hard drive into your Mac. Attach the USB end of the hard drive's cable to one of your Mac's USB ports, then attach the other end to the hard drive.
- Most modern Macs have USB-C (also known as Thunderbolt) ports rather than traditional USB 3.0 ports. If this is the case for you, you may need to buy a USB 3.0 to USB-C adapter for your Mac before you can attach your external hard drive.
Advertisement
3
Format your external hard drive. Formatting allows the hard drive to work on your Mac's operating system; failing to format the drive means that you won't be able to use it.
- Make sure to select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the File System value.
4
Turn off FileVault. FileVault makes it impossible to clone your Mac's hard drive, so you'll need to disable FileVault if you ever had it enabled.
5
Prompt your Mac to restart. Click the Apple menu

, click Restart... in the drop-down menu, and click Restart Now when prompted. Your Mac will begin to restart.
6
Press and hold ⌘ Command+R. You'll need to do this immediately after clicking Restart Now and hold them until the recovery screen appears.
7
Wait for the Recovery icon to appear. It resembles a spinning globe. Once the icon appears, you can release the ⌘ Command and R keys. Your Mac will continue loading the Recovery screen; when it finishes, you can proceed to the next part.

1
Click Disk Utility. It's in the middle of the Recovery window.
2
Click Continue. This option is in the bottom-right corner of the window. Doing so opens the Disk Utility window.
3
Select your external hard drive. Click your external hard drive's name or letter in the left-hand side of the window.
4
Click Edit. This menu item is in the upper-left corner of the screen. A drop-down menu will appear.
5
Click Restore…. It's in the drop-down menu. This will open a pop-up window.
6
Select your Mac's hard drive. Click the "Restore from" drop-down box, then click your Mac's hard drive's name in the resulting drop-down menu.
7
Click Restore. It's a blue button on the right side of the window. This will prompt your Mac's hard drive's contents to begin copying over to your external hard drive.
8
Wait for the copying to finish. When prompted, you're free to restart your Mac and begin using it like usual.
9
Eject your external hard drive. This will ensure that the information stored on the drive doesn't accidentally get corrupted.

Add New Question

Question
How do I back up my Mac immediately?

Chiara Corsaro is the General Manager and Apple Certified Mac & iOS Technician for macVolks, Inc., an Apple Authorized Service Provider located in the San Francisco Bay Area. macVolks, Inc. was founded in 1990, is accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) with an A+ rating, and is part of the Apple Consultants Network (ACN).

Phone & Computer Repair Technician
Expert Answer
Question
Will this remove the data that is already on the hard drive?

None of the above will remove the data that is already on the Mac's main, internal hard drive. However, Step 3 of Part 1 will remove the data that is already on the external hard drive.
Question
Can I use an external HDD with ExFat formatting?

Yes, you can. This is helpful if you want to use the same HDD with Mac and Windows both.

See more answers

Ask a Question

200 characters left

Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.

Submit

This process is also known as "imaging" your hard drive, because it creates a perfect image of your hard drive's contents and their exact locations.
Thanks! We’re glad this was helpful. Looking for more fun ways to learn on wikiHow? Learn about yourself with <a href='/Quizzes'>Quizzes</a> or try our brand new <a href='/Games/Train-Your-Brain'>Train Your Brain</a> word game.

Data stored on external hard drives can decay with the passage of time. Be sure to routinely back up your Mac (e.g., once every month).
Thanks! We’re glad this was helpful. Looking for more fun ways to learn on wikiHow? Learn about yourself with <a href='/Quizzes'>Quizzes</a> or try our brand new <a href='/Games/Train-Your-Brain'>Train Your Brain</a> word game.

About This Article

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 207,035 times.

Is this article up to date?

How do I backup my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive without Time Machine?

How do I backup my Mac without a Time Machine?.

Launch Disk Drill on your Mac..

Select “Byte-to-byte Backup” from the left panel..

Choose the drive or partition you want to back up..

Click the “Create backup” button and select a target location where the data will be stored..

Allow the process to complete..

How do I backup my Mac onto a hard drive?

Create a Time Machine backup Or choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, then click Time Machine. Click Select Backup Disk. Select the name of your disk, then click Use Disk. Time Machine immediately begins making periodic backups—automatically and without further action by you.

What is the best way to backup Mac?

Option 1: Use Time Machine Apple includes its own backup software, Time Machine as part of the macOS. It's an exceptionally easy to use solution. All you need to do is plug in an external storage device, hard drive or SSD, and start backing up with Time Machine.

How do I backup my laptop to an external hard drive?

Connect the external drive to your computer, then select the Start menu. In Windows 11, type file history and select File History. In Windows 10, type backup and select Backup settings. Select Add a drive to choose the external hard drive you want to use for your file history backups.