how do I back up my mac?

Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Points
1
hello, everyone,

I'm new to these forums,

my mac is not well, its a macbook pro, well it hasn't been for a long time, it keeps jamming and the spiraly thing comes on, so annoying! so I think i need to take it to the mac hospital, as it's still under warranty, for some reason I can't make an app on the apple site to visit a store, their links aren't working, I wonder if that is deliberate.

Anyway...

my question is (excuse my ignorance) but How do I back up everything on my computer? I haven't got a clue how I go about it, or what I need:Oops:
 
Joined
Apr 9, 2010
Messages
21
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Your Mac's Specs
Powermac G5 - Dual 2.0 - 6GB Ram
if you have a large enough external drive you can run Carbon Copy cloner and it will make a bootable backup drive so you can boot off of it and have everything there.
 
Joined
Jul 30, 2009
Messages
7,295
Reaction score
301
Points
83
Location
Wisconsin
Your Mac's Specs
Mac Mini (Late 2014) 2.6GHz Intel Core i5 Memory: 8GB 1600MHz DDR3
"the spiraly thing" is typically called the spinning beachball

no, Apple is not deliberately sabotaging their site

Assuming you have Leopard, or Snow Leopard, then you also have Time Machine. That's backup software. You need an external drive to backup to.

A simpler way to safeguard your files is to plug in a USB flash drive and copy your Documents folder to it using drag & drop. This is not a "true" backup, but it does provide backup copies of those files.
 
OP
B
Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Points
1
hello,

thanks peeps,

yes i do have time machine, so do I need to buy an external hard drive? if so do you recommend which one is best for mac?

then will i need to learn how to use time machine then that backs it on to external hard drive? is that correct?

thanks for the heads up about the beachball, it's very pretty but not for a long time! lol
 
C

chas_m

Guest
yes i do have time machine, so do I need to buy an external hard drive? if so do you recommend which one is best for mac?

Doesn't matter. Everyone has their favourite and they will swear up and down that all the others except (brand x) are junk. It really doesn't matter.

I personally still prefer Firewire external hard drives with a USB2 option over USB2 only, because FW is faster. That said, for backup it hardly matters.

then will i need to learn how to use time machine then that backs it on to external hard drive? is that correct?

If you call clicking "Use as Backup Drive" when TM asks you if your freshly-connected external drive should be used for backup, then yes you need to "learn" it. :)

I'd suggest having a look at this video to see what TM is all about -- and to wonder why you never thought to use TM up till now.
 
OP
B
Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Points
1
do you know if i can back up from time machine onto a dvd/cd and how I can find out how much storage space i will need?
 
Joined
Oct 13, 2009
Messages
306
Reaction score
5
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Pro, 2.53 GHz, 4 GB DDR3, 250 GB HDD, 10.6.4
If you have a MobileMe account (which I highly recommend), you can use Backup to back up a lot of things to DVD. I'm sure there are ways to do this, but I haven't tried any of them. You might try using something like Slices to split up the contents of your hard drive onto CDs, but I doubt you want to be mucking around with your files that drastically, especially with a lagging computer.

One thing before you ship it off to Apple-land: have you run Onyx or something similar to try and solve your problem? It fixes permissions and cleans up .plist files, etc. and can clear up a lot of issues you might be having.
 
Joined
Feb 23, 2009
Messages
1,346
Reaction score
50
Points
48
Your Mac's Specs
21" iMac * 2.8 Ghz Intel Core i7 * 16GB 1333 Mhz DDR3 * 1TB HD *AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 MB
The best way to find out how big of a drive you'll need is to right-click on your Macintosh HD and choose "Get Info". A window will pop up telling you how much space you've got left out of how much space total. Use that to determine how big of an external drive to get.

When you first plug in an external Firewire drive, the computer will probably ask you if you want to use it as the Time Machine backup drive. IF it doesn't, just open Time Machine from the applications menu. It will ask you if there's anything you DON'T want included in your backup. When you're ready, the backup will start automatically.

You can find out more if you watch the tutorial. Apple - Find Out How - Mac Basics
 
Joined
Feb 18, 2010
Messages
177
Reaction score
1
Points
18
just get a regular 500GB or 1TB (I would recommend at least 2X your hard drive space) from any store (again, I personally like WD and no I am not affiliated with them). When you plug it in Timemachine will ask you if you want to use it as your backup drive, click Yes and sit back and relax...
 
OP
B
Joined
Apr 20, 2010
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Points
1
thanks Corbab, yes will prob take too long with dvds now, im not sure what onyx is, but will google it to find out.

thanks Oneironuat I seem to have too much for dvds,so will need to get the hard drive.

thanks for your advice Sau124.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top