How to full backup mac?

• Locate System Preferences in the Apple Menu.
• Select Time Machine.
• Select Backup Disk.
• Select Your Hard Drive and Encrypt Backup.
• Create a Password for Your Backup.
• Wait for Backup to Begin.

Or maybe you just messed up a document you were working on, saved over something you didn’t want to lose, or realized that you deleted a chunk of work by accident. Recovering unsaved of deleted Word documents can be a particular challenge. If only you had a back up and could recover an earlier version.

Whatever your reason for wanting to find out the best way to back up your Mac, we aim to help you come up with a Mac backup plan. We’ll look at the various kinds of Mac backup you can have, including local wired or wireless backups, live backups, remote backup, and online backups.

We’ll also examine the best Mac backup solutions, including backing up to iCloud or another online service such as Dropbox, using Time Machine or other backup software for a local backup (we have an in-depth article about how to use Time Machine here), and the various remote backup services that are available to you if you want to make sure that you can recover your data if both your computer and local backup gets wiped out.

If you have just lost everything on your Mac due to a damaged drive then have a look at this article for some ideas on ways to recover your data from your damaged drive.

We have a separate guide to the best backup software.

We’re probably preaching to the converted here, but we’ll quickly run through the reasons why you really ought to be backing up your Mac, in no particular order:

There are lots of ways you can backup your Mac, but if you were to choose just one way to backup a Mac, which should it be?

Well, the simplest and cheapest solution is probably to back up using Time Machine, Apple’s free backup software. The only associated cost would be purchasing an external drive but since you can purchase 1TB storage for less than £40/$30 these days, it shouldn’t break the bank. We’ve got a round up of the best hard drives here.

Time Machine is a good solution, but is it the best backup solution? A better solution might be one that is not kept at the same location as your Mac, given that if there was a fire or flood, both Mac and backup could be destroyed.

There are many alternatives to Time Machine that you might prefer. We look at the best backup software separately, including Acronis, ChronoSync, Carbon Copy Cloner, Carbonite and SuperDuper.

We’ll look at some of the options below, but our advice is don’t rely on just one of the following!

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. We have a complete guide to using Time Machine to back up your Mac.

Time Machine won’t just backup your Mac, it creates a versioned backup, which means it will keep hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for each month. As a result you can recover an earlier version of a document if you need to.

Having a versioned backup is a benefit because not only does it protect you if something goes wrong with your Mac, it also protects you from user error (saving over a document for example). ChronoSync ($49.99/£36.00 at Econ Technologies) can also make versioned backups too.

Other benefits of Time Machine include its tight integration with macOS. A Time Machine backup makes it especially easy to transfer all your data, settings, and apps from one Mac to another. It’s also really intuitive to use.

The only real disadvantages of Time Machine are that you need to remember to plug in your hard drive otherwise nothing will be backed up, although you could set up Time Machine on a NAS drive for a wireless backup, but that might be a bit slower. You’ll also need a lot of storage available because Time Machine backups take up more space than all the data on you Mac, because of those incremental backups. We’d recommend using a drive with at least four times as much space as you have on your Mac. See our round up of the best hard drive.

We have a step-by-step guide to backing up with Time Machine here, but essentially you just need to do the following:

We cover how to delete Time Machine Mac backups in a separate article.

With iPhones and iPads you can save a back up of your device in iCloud that you can recover your device from. If you get a new iPhone you can use the iCloud back up to recover all your settings and data to the new device.

If you were hoping that you could back up your Mac to Apple’s iCloud instead of a external hard drive prepare to be disappointed though: you can’t back up your whole Mac to iCloud and iCloud doesn’t work with Time Machine. That doesn’t mean that iCloud can’t be used to back up some of what’s on your Mac though.

You can automatically sync certain files from your Mac to iCloud, you shouldn’t see this as a back up though, because if you delete the file, or amend the file, there won’t be an old version you can go back to. This is a sync rather than a back up. Having your files synced to iCloud is great though because you can access them on any of your Apple devices (and even from a PC if you go via iCloud.com).

The files you can sync this way include everything on your Desktop and everything in your Documents folder. If you use apps like Pages and Numbers the documents you create will also be saved to the cloud, and your Mail and Messages can also be stored in the cloud.

You will need to pay Apple a monthly subscription for iCloud storage. Monthly subscription prices are as follows:

You can also sync your Photos to iCloud Photo Library, and store all your music in iCloud using iTunes Match (for £21.99/$24.99 a year,) or, if you already subscribe to Apple Music (£9.99/$9.99 a month) you can use iCloud Music Library to access your music anywhere. We explain the difference between iTunes Match and Apple Music here.

That’s what you can sync automatically, but as we said above, you can use iCloud to back up some of the data on your Mac just by copying it to your iCloud Drive.

Here’s how to sync your Mac using iCloud.

This won’t be automated in the same way as the sync, but it’s a good idea to copy any data  that isn’t being synced over to iCloud from time to time. Here’s how to do that:

Now you will not only be able to access the data on any of your Apple devices, and even via the web on a non-Apple device, you will be able to recover it if something goes wrong with your Mac. It’s also a great way to get an offsite backup.

Just don’t forget to regularly update that ‘backup’.

There are many alternatives to iCloud if you are looking for a way to sync and share your files. You might already be using Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or one of the other Cloud storage services we look at here.

These solutions are generally used for sharing a files with colleagues or friends, or storing files that everyone can collaborate on, rather than backing up all your data. Like iCloud you can subscribe to data plans that would allow you to store all your data in the cloud, but as with iCloud you wouldn’t easily be able to download a clone of your Mac should it be lost.

If you want to back up a few files then Dropbox, One Drive or Google Drive could be a good solution. You’ll have the benefit of being able to access the files from any device and you will essentially have a low cost off-site backup.

The process is similar for the other cloud storage services.

Those cloud services above are more for syncing and sharing files, not for storing all your data, but there are dedicated online backup solutions, such as Carbonite, which will backup your Mac over the web, for a fee ($4.92 a month, 15-day free trial). CrashPlan for Business is another option ($9.99, 30-day free trial).

The benefit of one of these dedicated cloud backup services is that the backup is remote – so if your Mac was destroyed in a fire or flood along with your Time Machine backup, you’d have a copy of all your data in a secure facility (these places will have a way of keeping your data safe and accessible even if they suffer a power cut or similar, although we’re not sure about end-of-the-world scenarios).

If your Mac fails, is lost, or stolen, you can recover everything from this cloud backup, as long as you have access to the internet.

There was another option that won’t cost as much as paying a company to host your backup. It was once possible to use CrashPlan for Home to sync your data to a drive at a friend’s house, which reduced the cost considerably. Unfortunately that service has now stopped.

The main disadvantage of either of these methods is that it can take a long time to complete that initial backup of your data, especially if you have a slow broadband connection, and on the flip-side, it can take an equally long time to recover all your data – in fact it could take weeks to restore all your data. You may also want to look at whether your broadband service is capped for uploads and downloads, because you may tip it over the edge and encounter extra fees if you were to upload or download a few hundred gigabytes of data. Another option is to look for a service that will send you a drive to backup to which you can then send to them for storage.

As with the alternatives to Time Machine that we discussed above, the way you back up your Mac to one of these online services will be determined by the one you choose, however, the process is likely to run something like this:

When the worst happens and you need to restore your data you’ll probably need to log in with your ID and password – so make sure you keep a copy of them somewhere other than on the Mac you are backing up.

As with Time Machine you can use the backup drive – or clone – to recover your Mac in the case of failure and to retrieve an earlier version of a document or a deleted photo. And, as with Time Machine, you do need to remember to plug in your drive for the backup.

A clone is slightly different to a Time Machine backup because it can be used to boot from, so you could plug it in to another Mac and boot up from it without recovering your Mac, which could be useful as a temporary measure. You can’t use a Time Machine backup in this way.

However, the ability to recover your Mac from a clone is no longer as simple as it was. Over the past few years, starting with Catalina and culminating with Big Sur and the arrival of the M1 Mac, the way that Apple organizes the startup volume has changed. Apple now splits the volume in two, separating data (which can be written) from the system volume (which is read-only and is where all your system settings and all the things macOS needs to work are stored). Not only is this system volume read-only, its is now a sealed volume, which means that it will be invalidated if the seal is broken – which will be the case if you try to boot from an external drive.

There are some workarounds that some backup software developers have used to get around this issue, but essentially it isn’t going to be as reliable as a way to recover a Mac from a back up as it once was – not least because Apple could change things again making your bootable clone redundant. So recovering from a clone is no longer the best way to recover your Mac following disaster.

However the data volume can still be backed up. To do this you could simply use Disk Utility to copy the Data volume to a disk image or back it up to a drive. Other options include:

Carbon Copy Cloner (£31.60/$39.99, 30 day trial) – has evolved from creating bootable clones. You can set backups to run or have them be triggered by events, such as plugging in a drive. Backups are incremental, just like Time Machine.

ChronoSync ($49.99, but on offer for $39.99) – can be used to create clones and archives of the Data volume, but another thing it can do is allow you to is synchronise folders on your Mac with another drive or computer on a regular basis.

SuperDuper (£26.05/$27.05) – You can make bootable clones and can even clone and Smart Update Time Machine backups. The latest version of SuperDuper adds support for creating bootable clones on Big Sur and Monterey Macs and is Apple silicon native.

The method you use to clone your Mac will depend on the software you are using to back up your Mac, the Mac you own and the version of macOS it is running – it may just not be possible – but if your Mac can create a clone you can expect it to be something like this:

Backing up a Mac computer is as important as backing up a Windows computer. After all, all of your crucial documents, images, and memories are on your Mac. You might lose everything if your Mac were to malfunction. An external hard drive is the ideal backup location for Mac backups. You may back up your Mac to an external hard drive for various reasons, including file security, space conservation, or privacy protection.

Does Time Machine back up everything on your Mac? Undoubtedly, Time Machine is an excellent backup and recovery solution for all Mac devices. But it cannot back up system log files or apps, temporary files, and trash or iCloud contents. It can help you automatically back up data to external hard drives to avoid data loss. A case in point is that when you clean install macOS Ventura, you can back up your Mac using Time Machine.

So, here comes a question can we back up Mac to an external drive without Time Machine? This answer is yes. Without Time Machine, there are other ways to back up a Mac computer to an external drive. Keep reading!

Before backing up your Mac to an external disk, there are a few things to do. You should check the storage space of the external drive to ensure there is enough space for backups. And if the external drive hasn't been formatted, you need to format it using Disk Utility. The steps to format an external drive via Disk Utility are as follows:

Step 1. Plug in an external hard drive, and go to Applications > Utilities to open Disk Utility.

Step 2. Choose the external drive from the list, and click Erase.

Step 3. Choose a format form. Choose ExFat if you want the drive to access the files on a Windows computer. Then click Erase.

Here, two practical ways will be introduced to help you back up your Mac to an external hard drive. You can read the two methods carefully, then create a backup of your Mac computer and store the backup on the external drive. Let's see how they work.

If you want to find a simple way to help you back up files on your Mac computer without Time Machine, you can turn to professional backup software for help. Under such circumstances, EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac, the best backup software for Mac, comes in handy.

EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac is a powerful backup software for Mac devices running any macOS operating system, including the latest macOS Ventura. It can help you back up your Mac without Time Machine and create backups in full, incremental, and differential modes. As a great alternative to Time Machine, EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac has much to offer. It also lets you clone a USB drive and create a disk image. Most importantly, you can back up your Mac computer to an external drive with three simple steps.

The following are the detailed steps to back up your Mac to external storage devices.

Step 1. Launch and run EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac. Click the first Backup tab or simply click the + button in the bottom-left corner to create a backup project - name the backup project and click OK.

Step 2. Set up the backup destination where you want to store Mac files as backups, automatic backup frequency, etc and click OK.

Step 3. Add files and folders to the backup project. Click File+ to selectively choose files and folders to add to the backup and click the blue start button to back up your Mac to another drive or external device.

You can manually back up Mac files to an external hard drive without using Time Machine. Plug in the external disk to your Mac computer to get started and begin to back up your data. The following are the detailed steps:

Step 1. Click Finder > Preference and check the Hard disks under Show these items on the desktop.

Step 2. Open the external disk, then create a file folder and name it.

Step 3. Open the Mac disk, click the Users' file folder, choose all files you want to back up, and drag them to the file folder.

Step 4. Wait for the copying process to finish.

Knowing how to back up Mac to external hard drive without Time Machine is very important. This is because you can always retain data after some unfortunate scenarios. In short, you can back up your Mac to an external disk manually or using a third-party tool. Using EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac will be easier than manually copying files. Try EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac to back up your Mac to an external drive or other external storage devices if you're in a hurry.

1. What is the best way to backup files on Mac?

Time Machine can back up images, movies, music, and documents. Once you set up Time Machine, it can automatically back up your Mac regularly. But Time Machine cannot back up everything on your Mac, such as iCloud content, temporary files, and system log files. Fortunately, you can use EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac, the best backup software for Mac, to back up data on your Mac.

While trying to find out how to back up a Mac, avoid using the “entire system” option too often. Using the built-in Mac backup feature (Time Machine backup), you only select drives to backup and have the ability to exclude certain paths. It is an easy to use approach, but it lacks flexibility.

Time Machine is able to determine whether a particular file should be backed up or not, but some applications can change their configuration in their .app package, meaning the entire program file will be marked as ‘changed’. You will just spend an additional volume on a backup repository that is not actually necessary.

Thus, choosing particular folders with real user files is a better option, but you may need third-party software permission to do so.

When dealing with regular data backups, it is important to implement Mac incremental backup to shorten copying time and minimize consumed storage space. Since every small change in a file renders it as “backup required,” it is possible to copy only modified files. This approach can save a lot of time when you suffer from a poor network/Mac performance, due to a backup running. Moreover, it can save storage space in a backup repository, so you could store more backup points.

While deciding on how to backup files on Mac please check that the backup software of your choice allows you to create incremental and full backups separately. For example, MSP360 Backup allows you to create incremental data copies as often as you want, whilst preserving full backup jobs weekly/monthly, etc. You can read more about incremental backup in our separate article.

Please also note that certain backup tools, including Time Machine, do not allow you to choose between using a Mac incremental backup or Mac full backup. If you back up frequently, you will experience long restoration times due to a lot of backup copies.

Whilst there are many physical backup options for Mac, consider using cloud storage as a backup target. Storage clouds are inexpensive nowadays and prevent you from dealing with costly hardware which often lacks reliability. Plus, you will get a geo-redundant and highly available storage service that can last in case of any disaster.

It is also convenient to have a backup repository while traveling around the world – you can restore any corrupted or missing file with a couple of clicks. In addition, it is impossible to lose such a storage type at an airport or for it to get it corrupted, in any case. Local storage may have the same level of convenience, yet this only possible when using an expensive two-drive NAS system with an Internet access option, which is far more difficult to maintain.

When searching for a proper backup cloud product, remember that there are two types of cloud storage:

Fortunately, almost every cloud service provides a free trial period so you can check their strengths and weaknesses for yourself.

Remember that the “3-2-1” backup strategy is a gold standard on a market, so it is better to implement Mac local backup, even for personal needs.

Rule “3-2-1” stands for:

To start a backup manually, without waiting for the next automatic backup, choose Back Up Now from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. Check backup status. Use the Time Machine menu in the menu bar to check the status of a backup or skip a backup in progress.

Imagine what would happen to all of your digital photos and videos if your hard drive malfunctioned. Over time, it happens to the best equipment. Or if all of the documentation for your home business was suddenly destroyed by a big glass of soda that was inadvertently spilled on your computer.

The backup methods are not mutually exclusive, and to really protect your data you might want to consider creating multiple types of backups. Let’s find out how to backup your Mac to ensure that your precious data is safe in the event of an unforeseen event that leads to a data loss.

It is considered a best practice throughout the computing community to regularly create backups. There are multiple reasons why you should adopt this activity to protect the valuable data stored on your Mac. Among the most important are:

When using Time Machine to create a backup or cloning your hard drive, you need to provide sufficient storage space on which to save your backup. You might be tempted to designate a partition of your main hard drive for this purpose but that would not be a good idea. The goal is to protect your data, and having a backup on the same physical disk as the original data does not fulfill that objective.

To adequately protect your data you will need to invest in a peripheral storage device such as a USB attached hard drive. You might choose to only attach this drive when performing backups or you can leave it connected to your computer at all times. If you want to run automatic backups, a device that is always attached will let your backups run with no manual intervention.

If you choose to back up your Mac to an external drive, you need to make sure that the drive is fully prepared. You should check two things before backing up your computer: whether there’s enough space in the external drive to fit all your data and whether the drive is of the correct format.

Here’s how to format your external hard drive to make it compatible with macOS:

There are many reasons that may have influenced your decision to purchase a Mac for your computing needs. One is the ease in which the advanced functionality of the machine can be harnessed by just about anyone. Your computer is full of features designed to make your computing life easier and more productive.

The engineers at Apple are well aware that it is important for them to provide users with a way to easily take quality backups of their system and data. To that end, they have included an excellent backup utility with your Mac operating system. It is called Time Machine and we are going to show you how to use it to protect your data.

It really is that simple. Time Machine makes it easy for you to back up your Mac. It’s up to you to either leave the external drive attached or connect it periodically to allow the utility to protect your data.

According to Apple, Time Machine will automatically make hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. As your storage device becomes full, the oldest backups are deleted so newer backups can continue to use the device.

This method of backing up, known as incremental backup, saves time and storage space by not making unnecessary duplicate copies of files. It does, however, save multiple copies of files that change, so you can go back to get previous versions as long as there is room on your backup storage device. For this reason, it is recommended that you obtain the largest storage device that you can so you can retain your old backup versions for a long period of time.

The second method of backing up your Mac also requires the use of an external storage device to hold a clone of your hard drive. The external drive needs to be at least as large as your primary disk in order to be sure that there will be enough room to store the cloned copy.

A clone of your disk indicates that the disk is copied bit-by-bit to create an exact copy of your primary drive. Clones can be used as your main backup method and can also be instrumental in data recovery efforts by minimizing disk usage on a damaged drive.

Here are some ways to clone your Mac’s drives:

Disk Drill software for Mac offers an easy & totally free way to clone your Mac. The tool can use the clone to enact data recovery functions or you can simply use it as a backup that is an exact copy of your original disk.

It may take a while, but eventually the process will end and you will now have a large DMG file that contains the contents of your hard drive. This clone can be used for data recovery operations, or simply stored as a backup of your machine.

Another tool that you can use to create disk image clones is SuperDuper!. It is an easy to use utility that can be downloaded for a free trial, with a paid version costing $27.95. It is a reliable application that can be used to protect your Mac’s valuable data.

Here is another software utility that lets you create bootable disk images of your Mac’s hard drive. It works with all version of the macOS and will cost you $39.99 for a fully licensed version. If you want, it’s also possible to try out this application for free.

Recently a new method of backing up your computer has become available to individual users. Remotely backing up to the cloud offers the user some advantages over more traditional backup methods. Rather than use an external storage device that you furnish, when using an online backup service you use their storage.

There are many options available for performing online backups. We will take a look at a few of them and describe what they offer and their costs.

Free options: Your Apple ID and password give you access to iCloud and a 5GB storage capacity. You can easily create a folder structure on your iCloud Drive and manually copy your files to the cloud location.

Paid options: Based on how much data you will store in the cloud, you can upgrade your storage plan. With iCloud, you can obtain 50GB a month for $0.99 all the way up to terabytes at $9.99 each.

Free options: Similar to iCloud Drive is the online storage offered by Google. When you sign up for a Google account you are given 15GB of free storage which can be upgraded as you need it.

Paid options: 100 GB will cost you $1.99 a month and a terabyte of storage will set you back $9.99.

Free options: Another online alternative that will allow you to backup your data is Dropbox. When you sign up for a Dropbox account, you can save any of your data to their online storage – you get 2GB for free.

Paid options: An upgrade to 1 terabyte will cost you $9.99 / month; 2 terabytes – $19.99 / month.

You pay for the storage by the month and can use as much as you are willing to purchase. You are not constrained by the size of your storage device. Since you have backed up to an online location, your data is kept separately from your computer, ensuring that you can retrieve your data in the event of a catastrophe such as a fire or flood that may destroy the primary and backup copies of your data.

OneDrive is Microsoft’s consumer cloud storage platform and can be used to back up files on your Mac by using the following steps. You need a Microsoft account in order to use OneDrive. Once you have created your account, you can continue this procedure.

Files copied to the OneDrive folder are backed up to the cloud and accessible from any of your devices with Internet access.

Backups are only useful when used to restore or recover data. Following is the procedure to recover data from a Time Machine backup. We will look at how to selectively restore files from Time Machine in the event of lost or deleted data. The selected files must have been included in one of your Time Machine backups for this method to work.

As you can see, there are a multitude of techniques you can employ to backup your Mac. Failure to backup your machine leaves you exposed to data loss and all the problems that can result from such an event. If you are not currently backing up your Mac, choose one of the options above and start doing it today. You never know when a backup may be required to recover your precious files.