- Macbook Pro Solid State Hard Drive
- Macbook How To Use
- How To Copy Dvd To Macbook Pro Hard Drive
- Apple Macbook Pro Hard Drive
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.
Once you have selected the items you want to copy to the new system drive, click the 'Transfer' button. Depending on how much data is being is being copied, this may take a while. After Migration Assistant finishes you can continue the rest of the process. Once the setup is complete your computer will bring you to the login screen or your desktop.
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.
- Obviously, I thought I could simply copy and paste the media files from the old drive to the new one.I cannot copy the media files to my internal drive first as my internal drive is only 250GB and nearly full itself.I have used Disk Utility to attempt to close the old drive to the new drive, but keep getting 'insufficient space' errors.
- In those cases, your best bet is to clone your hard drive, creating an exact copy you can swap in and boot up right away. Some backup services, like IDrive and Acronis, have built-in disk-cloning.
- You can find instructions cloning a drive using an earlier version of Disk Utility. In the sidebar, select the volume to which you want to copy/clone data. The volume you select will be the destination drive for the Restore operation. Select Restore from Disk Utility’s Edit menu.
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 recover important information in case of something bad happening to your computer. 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?
- How to transfer files from a Mac desktop to an external hard drive
by Bill White 4 years ago
How to transfer files from a Mac desktop to an external hard drive
Transferring files from your Mac desktop to a USB flash drive or an external hard disk seems to be a simple task, right? Well, that might not be as easy as you think, especially if you are more familiar with Windows. As you probably know, external drives come pre-formatted using the NTFS file system, which Mac OS X can successfully read, but cannot write on.
How to deal with this problem
So, if you are unable to copy files to your external hard disk or USB stick, the problem is that you're dealing with an NTFS-formatted drive. Luckily, all you have to do is re-format your drive using the HFS+ file system to turn it into a standard drive for Mac OS X. Moreover, you won't even have to search for other applications to do that, because your operating system comes with a tool called 'Disk Utility' that can help you perform this task.
All you have to do is connect your external drive to your Mac, launch the app, click on the icon of the disk you want to format, navigate to the 'Erase' tab and click on the 'Erase' button while having 'Mac OS X Extended' selected as the volume format, as seen in the image below. If you like, you can also add a name for your future volume.
Formatting a drive or volume will delete all the data from it. So, if you don't want to lose your files, make sure you have everything backed up before starting this process.
Volume Format
Macbook Pro Solid State Hard Drive
Simple, right? After the process if complete, you should be able to freely transfer your files to your extended drive without any problems whatsoever, either by using the copy/paste method or by dragging and dropping your items onto the drive's window.
While Mac OS X can read NTFS drives and write on HFS+ ones, Windows' behaviour is quite the opposite, as it is able to read HTF+ drives, but writes on NTFS ones. However, if you want to use an external hard drive or any other type of external storage device on both systems, you can do that by formatting it using the FAT32 file system. However, you should know that it is not as reliable as the other options.
Transfer the files from your Mac to an external drive
The process of transferring files from your Mac to an external drive is simple, but if you are not sure how to do it, then following these steps will get you through it.
Step 1
Connect your external drive to your Mac and wait for the icon of the plugged-in drive to appear
Step 2
Macbook How To Use
Double-click the icon of the drive in order to open it (its window).
Step 3
Either drag-and-drop the files to the opened drive's window or copy and paste the data you want to transfer
Step 4
After the copy process is completed, safely eject the drive either by dragging its icon to the Trash bin or hold the 'Ctrl' key and click on the drive's icon to access the eject option.
Step 5
Now you can safely disconnect your drive, without causing any damage to it.
Conclusion
As you can see, transferring files from your Mac system to your external hard drives is quite a simple process. Now you can safely back up important files to an USB drive or simply transfer data between computers with just a few clicks of a mouse.
How To Copy Dvd To Macbook Pro Hard Drive
If you have any questions or comments about this topic, feel free to leave me a message in the section below.
Apple Macbook Pro Hard Drive
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