Connect your Mac to a formatted external hard drive. Connect the drive to your computer using the cable provided (usually USB, Lightning or eSATA). 2 Click on the Apple menu. If you back up to multiple disks, you can press and hold the Option key, then choose Browse Other Backup Disks from the Time Machine menu. To exclude items from your backup, open Time Machine preferences, click Options, then click the add (+) button to add an item to be excluded.
How to Backup MacBook Air/Pro/iMac to External Hard Drive with Time Machine
Time Machine is a built-in tool on Mac, which works with internal and external disk drives to backup and restore data for macOS. It's one of the easiest way to save your Mac data to SSD or HDD, including mac apps, media files, DVD backup, documents and other. Follow Mac backup steps with Time Machine below. You have to format your new external hard drive for Mac before backup.
Step 1: Connect external hard drive to Mac via USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt or so, and a message will pop up, asking whether you want to use the drive to back up with Time Machine. Click 'Use as Backup Disk'. You can check the box 'Encrypt Backup Disk' and enter password to encrypt the portable hard drive.
- Your external hard drive should at least be the same size as your Mac's internal drive. Check out our list of best external hard drive for Mac.
- If you don't see this message, click Apple menu > System Preferences and select Time Machine, click 'Select Backup Disk' and select the external hard drive for Mac backup on the list, and click Use Disk.
- You external hard drive should be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you formatted it as Windows format other improper formats, you have to erase and reformat the external hard drive with Disk Utility. If so, back up your current data on the external storage device as reformatting will erase all the data.
- Time Machine will use up all the storage on the external hard drive. If you don't want the backup take up all the space on the drive and need to store other data on this drive, follow to partition external hard drive on Mac with Time Machine.
Step 2: Check the box 'Back Up Automatically' and Time Machine will auto backup your Mac computer. Time Machine keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month or weekly backups for all previous months, and the oldest backups will be deleted when the external hard drive has no free space. Learn how to free up disk space on Mac.
- Click Time Machine menu, you can start your Mac data backup now without waiting for auto backup.
- Turn off Time Machine to stop backing up, or deselect Backup Automatically under Time Machine preferences on macOS Sierra to disable Time Machine. You can select Skip This Backup to cancel backup procedure.
- Go to TimeMachine preferences under the Time Machine menu, click Options, '+' icon and select any item you want to exclude from this backup.
3Move Files To External Hard Drive (Drag and Drop)
5How To Formatted External Hard Drive In Mac OS X
6Reformat The External Hard Drive In Mac OS X
How To Transfer Files from Mac to External Hard Drive Without Formatting.
Mac OS X one of the best operating system for Apple computers there are lots of series of computer available in Apple Stores. But sometimes performing several tasks on mac are very difficult in this article we went show you how to migrate folders and files of mac to external hard drive.
So, first of all, you’ve to select the best external hard drives for mac backup from which you can easily restore important documents in case of the reboot of mac. Generate a backup on mac of videos, photos, and files on an external drive.
How To Migrate Files From Mac To Hard Drive
It was easy to move files from mac to mac but moving files from Mac to external hard drive is kinda hard which also relate to recovering files from the external hard drive.
However, sometimes due to the virus and some other error the data stored in external hard drive corporate and to recover the files from external hard drive recovery software for mac.
Now focus on, given below steps by steps guides let you know how to transfer files from mac to external hard drive.
Move Files To External Hard Drive (Drag and Drop)
Step 1
Connect the external hard drive to your mac using a USB cable and wait until the hard drive successfully connected to your computer. (Name of the drive should appear on your Mac screen).
Step 2 :
Open “Finder”, then locate the files to move to external hard drive.
Step 3 :
Create a New Folder in hard drive, then drag each file you want to backup from Mac system to external hard drive.
Step 4 :
Close the external hard drive once all files moved to from mac to external hard drive.
Using Disk Utility To Transfer Files Mac To External Hard Drive
Sometimes your external hard drive doesn’t allow you to transfer files from Mac. Because it’s your hard drive may be formatted with NTFS which is normal in a windows environment.
While OS X is able to READ from a drive that is formatted at NTFS, it cannot WRITE to one. You will get a warning saying that the drive cannot be modified. To fix this error you’ve to use Disk Utility. Remember to save everything to Mac before formatting the apple external hard drives.
How To Formatted External Hard Drive In Mac OS X
Step 1 :
Plug-In external hard drive to Mac using the USB cable. Wait until the hard drive name appears on Mac Desktop screen.
Step 2 :
In Mac OS X disc into your mac and restart your computer. Continue pressing the “C” key when the system is started.
Step 3 :
Choose the language and then select Disk Utility from Utilities menu. Adobe software for windows 7. Now select the disk which you want to connect to your mac and click on “Verify Disk”.
Step 4 :
Click on “Repair Disk” button to repair the external hard drive. Click on “New Image” and named your hard drive then select “128-bit” or “256-bit AES” from the encryption menu to add security to the backup.
Step 5 :
Click on the “Save” button and type the administration password, Conform it. (Wait till process to begin ).
Step 6 :
Now choose the new backup from the device. Mac security software. After completing the imaging process, select ”Image” and then Click on “Scan Image for Restore”.
Step 7 :
Press “Command Q” when the scan completes and then again press the same key to quit Mac OS X Installer window.
Reformat The External Hard Drive In Mac OS X
In my research. I’ve found that lots of Mac users how to purchase a new hard drive for mac. When they connected that hard drive to the Mac OS X system. The external Mac hard drive successfully connected to mac but files can’t transfer.
To resolve this issue, you’ve to reformat your external hard drive using Mac OS Extended option.
Step 1 :
Connect hard drive to Mac via USB slots.
Step 2 :
Now go to Utilities Folder > Disk Utility. Select the external hard drive.
Step 3 :
As long as you don’t have any important files in the external hard drive, choose “Ease” Tab and then select “Mac OS Extended(Journaled)”.
Step 4 :
Enter the new named of drive and Click Erase.
How To Backup Macbook With External Hard Drive Western Digital
I hope any of these methods will work for you to transfer files from mac to external hard drives with or without formatting the drive. Give your feedback via comment box.