How Do I Back Up My MacBook Pro?
There are two kinds of backups you can choose from: local or cloud. Local backups are made to an external hard drive physically attached to your Mac. Cloud backups are made using a service that stores your data in the cloud.
Local backups are usually quicker to make (since you don’t have to upload data to the cloud) and require a hard drive with enough free space to store your data. If you need to restore from your backup, a local option is usually faster. Cloud backups often require a subscription fee and can be slower if you have a lot of data to upload.
How Do I Transfer Everything From My MacBook Pro to an External Hard Drive?
The easiest way to create a local backup of your MacBook data is to use Time Machine, Apple’s backup software included with macOS. There are plenty of other backup programs, but the basics of using them are roughly the same. To backup your MacBook data using Time Machine, follow these steps:
Get an external hard drive with more storage capacity than the size of the hard drive you want to back up. Connect it to your Mac. Go to the Apple menu > System Preferences. Select Time Machine. Click Select Disk and select your external hard drive. The backup will begin automatically. We recommend checking the box next to Show Time Machine in menu bar. That adds an icon for Time Machine in the top right corner of the screen. Click it and then click Back Up Now to start a backup whenever you want.
How to Backup MacBook Using iCloud
Like there are many programs to make local backups, there are many services for cloud backup. Each service offers different features, benefits, drawbacks, and pricing.
For some people, the best option will be the one built into the macOS: iCloud. Apple offers iCloud Drive to back up your MacBook data to the cloud and keep your documents synced across devices. It means you can have up-to-date copies of your files on any device signed into your iCloud account, including iPhones and iPads.
Follow these steps to back MacBook to iCloud:
Make sure your MacBook is connected to the Internet and you’re signed into iCloud. Go to Apple menu > System Preferences. Click Apple ID > iCloud. Check the box next to each program you want to back up. Make sure iCloud Drive is checked and select Options to choose your iCloud Drive settings. Check the box next to each type of data you want to backup to iCloud Drive. The most important is Desktop and Documents Folders. With this enabled, any files on your desktop or stored in your Documents folder will be automatically backed up. Finally, select Done and close the Apple ID window. Backups will occur automatically.
Backup and Sync Selected Kinds of Data Using iCloud
Even if you don’t want to backup all of your data to iCloud, you can still backup selected data. Even better, that data can be synced to all of your Apple devices.
To do this, go to the Apple menu > System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud and check the box next to the types of data you want to back up (Contacts, Calendars, Notes, etc.). Use the same settings on all of your Apple devices, and they’ll stay in sync every time you make a change. You can access that data from iCloud.com, too.
