Almost everyone knows that backing up all of the files on your computer or any other device you have frequently is a good practice. You never know when your device, even if it’s reliable and secure (like a MacBook Pro), might fail, break, get lost or stolen. If any of these things happen it can be devastating but if you backup your data with an external hard drive, you at least have all of your files and other important information.

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2. External Backup Drive For Mac

1. The first time you plug in an external drive, Time Machine will ask if you want to use it as a backup drive. While you can customize backup options in System Preferences, such as asking Time.
2. The right thing to do is to keep your backup separate. On an external drive. Then, if the worst happens you can restore your backup. Back to your Mac if it needs a repair. Or to a brand new Mac. There’d be no way to do that if your backup was on your internal drive. Now that’s all cleared up let’s talk options. Choosing Your Mac Backup Drive. USB 3.0 or USB C?

An external hard drive makes it really easy to back up your computer so it’s a good idea to purchase one and learn the steps to back everything up. Hard drives can vary in cost and storage capacity but even though they are an added expense, they are more than worth it in the worst-case scenario of a broken or stolen MacBook.

These days, backing up your MacBook Pro is easy to do and if you own one of these computers you should learn how to back it up and do it often. It can be as easy as a click of a button but we will take a look at all of the steps necessary to backup your Mac as well as some other information to consider during the process.

Why Backing up MacBook Pro to an External Hard Drive

The reasons to backup your MacBook Pro to an external hard drive are pretty obvious but if you are unfamiliar with the reasons, or with backups in general, you should learn about them. Backing up your computer basically means that you are making copies of all the important information found on your computer. This could be all of your photos, music, videos, files, and any other piece of data found within your MacBook.

All of this data exists stored and saved within the hard drive built into your computer but making a backup of these is a good idea for a couple of reasons. Your MacBook Pro is an electronic device and these devices can break or fail due to accidents or because of manufacturer’s defects. Also, because of the popularity and cost of Apple products, your computer might be a target for theft. Because of these possibilities, it is important to back up your computer in case any of them happen to you.

An external hard drive makes it really easy to back up your computer so it’s a good idea to purchase one and learn the steps to back everything up. Hard drives can vary in cost and storage capacity but even though they are an added expense, they are more than worth it in the worst-case scenario of a broken or stolen MacBook.

How to Backup MacBook Pro to External Hard Drive

The first step to backing up your MacBook Pro is to connect your computer to an external hard drive. Hard drives come in many different shapes and sizes but all have a cord that will connect the drive into your computer. Plug this cord into the corresponding input on your MacBook Pro to allow the backup process between the hard drive and your computer to begin. Depending on what model MacBook Pro you have and which hard drive, this cord could be USB, Thunderbolt, or Firewire.

When you plug the hard drive into your computer, a popup box should appear that will ask you if you’d like to backup your computer using Apple’s built-in backup program, Time Machine.

When you see this box above, go ahead and click on Encrypt Backup Disc and then the Use as Backup Disk button.

You can also open up the Time Machine settings manually if it doesn’t happen to appear automatically.

To do this go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of your screen then click on System Preferences and then on Time Machine.

Once in the Time Machine box, click on Select Backup Disc to choose your external hard drive as the device to store the backup.

Click on the Use Disk button once you locate your external hard drive and your MacBook Pro will begin to back up your files.

If you turn Time Machine on and keep your computer plugged into your external hard drives, it will complete backups at scheduled intervals so you don’t have to worry about going through this process that often. You can choose the frequency you’d like backups to take place but having it set to automatic is an easy way to make sure your most current data is backed up.

Time Machine can automatically back up files every hour for 24 hours, once a day for a week, and weekly for previous months of use. The first time you back up your MacBook Pro to an external hard drive, it can take a long time. After this initial backup, it shouldn’t take as long and if you have Time Machine set up to conduct automatic backups, you might not even realize the backups are occurring.

Final Thoughts

Backing up your files from your MacBook Pro to an external hard drive is important and you should really consider doing it. It is a simple step you can take to easily recover important information in case of something bad happening to your computer and it’s really easy to do. The automatic backup feature on Time Machine makes things even easier and once you follow the steps above, your computer will be consistently backed up.

There are many different options when it comes to choosing an external hard drive. The main thing to consider is how much storage space you need. I’d recommend getting at least a 1TB size hard drive and that should cover an average person’s files from their computer. If you want a smaller drive, 500GB might be enough but hard drives these days are pretty compact so getting one with a larger capacity is recommended.

Do you backup your MacBook Pro often? What size hard drive do you use?

Why is it necessary to backup your Mac to an external hard drive?

It's supposed to be a routine to save a copy of your Mac data, and a system backup image if necessary. So, how did you backup the Mac machine normally? Did you save the backup file to an external storage device? Not yet? Then do it!

Only with a backup in a place out of Mac's internal HDD/SSD, the chances of data loss disaster can be effectively reduced. We sincerely suggest all of you Mac users start right now to keep at least 2 pieces of Mac backup image, one of which has to be on an external storage, such as a WD external hard drive, a Toshiba USB flash drive or even a SanDisk memory card, etc.

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What are the disadvantages of using Mac Time Machine backup?

Perhaps Apple Time Machine program will become the first backup option you come up with, but in this post, we're not going to teach you how to use Time Machine to backup your Mac, considering some noticeable disadvantages.

For example, quite a large number of users who use Time Machine complained that Time Machine is very likely to get stuck in preparing backup, and some said that they've encountered the situation that Time Machine backup restore failed because the 'Restore' button grayed out.

How to backup your Mac to an external hard drive for full system & data protection?

After some simple analysis, we think it's good to get to know a third-party Mac backup utility that can perfectly solve the problem raised by Time Machine backup. It's called EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac.

So, let's download and install the recommended backup software on Mac first, and follow the instruction below to learn the rich features and start to backup your Mac system and data files to a target external hard drive with simple clicks.

✔ Backup: support for scheduled backups; only copy files to a selected location without changing the file size and file format.

✔ Archive: support for full backup, differential bakcup and incremental backup; compress the backup image in order to save disk space.

✔ Disk clone: support cloning disk 1 to disk 2, including personal data and system.

✔ Sync: support for scheduled synchronization.

Guide: how to backup mac to external hard drive with EaseUS Todo Backup for Mac

Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to Mac and let Mac recognize it. Launch the software, click the first Backup tab > Click + button at the left corner of the left pane 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, automatically backup frequency etc and click OK.

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Step 3. Click File+ to selectively choose files and folders to backup and click the blue start button to backup your Mac to the external device now.