best external hd for mac backup and clone

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If you want to choose multiple disks for security or convenience, you can keep repeating these steps to add more disks such as one for home, work, or any other location necessary.

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Yet setting up a backup of your Mac can be frustrating since most external hard drives must be formatted before being used.

Best External Hd Backup And Clone How To Back Up

As youll see, however, knowing how to back up a Mac to an external hard drive doesnt have to be intimidating.

Acronis True Image 2021 Learn more Try now Choosing an External Drive: Solid-State Drive (SSD) or Hard Disk Drive (HDD) The first step in creating a backup for your Mac is choosing an external drive that enables the best data recovery option.

Choosing between an SSD or HDD means taking a look at the pros and cons of each.

Hard Disk Drives Pros: Storage capacity, price point Cons: Physical damage, physical size, speed If youre looking to store a lot of data, then a traditional HDD might be the best option because larger capacities drives are more reasonably priced.

HDDs use spinning disks to write data, however, which creates two different problems.

First, the spinning disks are more likely to break down if dropped or handled roughly.

Second, if you choose to fragment the information to protect your data recovery, the backup takes time.

Solid State Drives Pros: Speed, size, malfunction rates, lifespan Cons: Price point, storage size If youre looking to store 2 TB of data or less, an SSD offers tremendous value, boasting high speed, small size, and long lifespan.

SSDs use flash memory which writes data to memory chips rather than spinning disks.

Additionally, although they are expected to have longer lifespans than HDDs, they are relatively new which means projections of their lifespan potential remains conjecture.

Formatting an External Drive Copying the files from your Mac to an external drive allows you to save data on your own terms.

Since most external hard drives are formatted for PCs, before the backup of your Mac begins you need to format the hard drive for macOS.

Open Applications Utilities Disk Utility Find your external hard drive in the list of drives.

Confirm the action.

A Format pop-up window will give you the opportunity to choose one of the following.

Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) makes case-sensitive folders and Mac format.

Best External Hd Backup And Clone Password And Encryption

Backup and backup will be two different files.) Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled, Encrypted) adds password and encryption protection to the partition while also including Mac formatting with case sensitive folder names.

ExFAT allows you to use Windows volumes over 32 GB Rename the new drive Under Security Options make sure to set the drive to write over past data three times or more.

Erase and Confirm Backup with Time Machine Your Mac comes with Time Machine, Apples built-in backup feature.

Learning how to use Time Machines features can help you create a backup for data recovery.

Using an External Drive To set up Time Machine, you need to start by buying an external storage solution such as: An external hard drive that connects using the USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt port on your Mac.

Connecting the external hard drive to the USB port on an AirPort Extreme Base Station on your network An AirPort Time Capsule, Apples wireless router with network-attached storage, which you set up on your network Time Machine will automatically suggest that you encrypt your backup when you connect the external drive.

How to Choose a Backup Disk Time Machine should suggest a backup disk when you connect the drive to your Mac.

However, if it does not do this automatically you can easily choose the disk.

Go to the Time Machine menu Open Time Machine preferences or choose Apple menu System Preferences Time Machine Once you have opened System Preferences, you can click Select Backup Disk, Select Disk, or Add or Remove Backup Disk.

Best External Hd For Mac Backup And Clone