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You can use Time Machine, the built-in backup feature of your Mac, to automatically back up all of your files, including apps, music, photos, email, documents, and system files. When you have a backup, you can restore files from your backup if the original files are ever deleted from your Mac, or the hard disk (or SSD) in your Mac is erased or replaced.
Create a Time Machine backup
To create backups with Time Machine, all you need is an external storage device. After you connect the device and select it as your backup disk, Time Machine automatically makes hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. The oldest backups are deleted when your backup disk is full.
Navigate to the address field and type ‘WD Backup’ without the single quotes. Click the ‘WD backup - WD Support - Western Digital’ link. File size of WD Backup is 7.11MB. Click the Download button below the file name. The saved file of the WD Backup software is in the.exe format. Select and drag the downloaded file to a new location.
Connect an external storage device
Connect one of the following external storage devices, sold separately. Learn more about backup disks that you can use with Time Machine.
- External drive connected to your Mac, such as a USB, Thunderbolt, or FireWire drive
- External drive connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station (802.11ac model) or AirPort Time Capsule
- AirPort Time Capsule
- Mac shared as a Time Machine backup destination
- Network-attached storage (NAS) device that supports Time Machine over SMB
Select your storage device as the backup disk
When you connect an external drive directly to your Mac, you might be asked if you want to use the drive to back up with Time Machine. Select Encrypt Backup Disk (recommended), then click Use as Backup Disk.
An encrypted backup is accessible only to users with the password. Learn more about keeping your backup disk secure.
If Time Machine doesn't ask to use your drive, follow these steps to add it manually:
- Open Time Machine preferences from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. Or choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, then click Time Machine.
- Click Select Backup Disk (or Select Disk, or Add or Remove Backup Disk):
- Select your external drive from the list of available disks. Then select ”Encrypt backups” (recommended) and click Use Disk:
If the disk you selected isn't formatted as required by Time Machine, you're prompted to erase the disk first. Click Erase to proceed. This erases all information on the backup disk.
Enjoy the convenience of automatic backups
After you select a backup disk, Time Machine immediately begins making periodic backups—automatically and without further action by you. The first backup may take a long time, depending on how many files you have, but you can continue using your Mac while a backup is underway. Time Machine backs up only the files that changed since the previous backup, so future backups will be faster.
To start a backup manually, choose Back Up Now from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. Use the same menu to check the status of a backup or skip a backup in progress.
Learn more
- If you back up to multiple disks, you can switch disks before entering Time Machine. 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. To stop excluding an item, such as an external hard drive, select the item and click the Remove (–) button.
- If using Time Machine to back up to a network disk, you can verify those backups to make sure they're in good condition. Press and hold Option, then choose Verify Backups from the Time Machine menu.
- In OS X Lion v10.7.3 or later, you can start up from your Time Machine disk, if necessary. Press and hold Option as your Mac starts up. When you see the Startup Manager screen, choose “EFI Boot” as the startup disk.
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.
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.
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✔ 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
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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.
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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.