How to back up your Mac

Backing up your new Mac device is the smartest choice you can think of. Although Macs are not prone to failure, accidents can happen at any time. Therefore, you should back up your Mac regularly or set the machine to backup automatically.

There are many ways to do this. However, the most trustworthy and efficient method is to use Apple's own Time Machine tool.

Method 1 – Using Time Machine

You can use Time Machine to securely back up your Mac to an external drive. This also gives you the option to schedule automatic updates for your device.

Note – Time Machine formats the external device before setting it as a backup drive. Therefore, if it contains some important files, you should back them up to another drive.

Step 1 –On your Mac, click the “Apple” icon and then click “System Settings” to open it.

[If you are using an older version before macOS Ventura, you must click on the "Apple" logo and then click on "System Preferences" to execute Same operation]

Step 2 –Now, click on “Time Machine”.

Step 3 –On the next page of Time Machine, you can select the device driver from the wizard.

Step 4 –After that, click on “Use Disk” to use that disk*.

After this, Time Machine will start counting down to stage the next backup. So wait for the timer to reach zero so that the backup process can start.

Step 5 –You can easily see the status of the backup process if you look at the Time Machine screen. Depending on the files and applications you have, this process may take longer.

Once the backup process is completed, you will see the following message in the notification –

Time Machine has finished the first backup to

In this way, you can Create backups easily with Time Machine.

*Note –

If your drive is not empty, Time Machine will prompt you to erase all data on the drive.

So, you can just click "Erase" to completely erase the drive and start the process.

Automated backup process

You can set up Time Machine as an automatic backup system.

Step 1 –On your Mac, click the “Apple” icon. Now, click on “System Settings” to open it.

[In older generation Mac devices, this same setting is called "System Preferences".

Step 2 –Look for the “Time Machine” application. You can find it at the bottom of the menu. Click it. A

Step 3 –When Time Machine opens, make sure you have “Automatic Backup” checked.

You can now close the Time Machine tab. It will now handle backup situations automatically. Typically, it creates system snapshots on a daily basis.

Method 2 – Back up Mac using iCloud

You can use iCloud space to back up Mac devices. This cloning feature is one of the convenient features of iCloud. You can use this clone to easily recreate your system image when you need it.

Step 1 –Click the spotlight icon or press the command space bar to open the spotlight.

Step 2 –Then, type “云” in the search bar.

Step 3 –Now, click on “iCloud Drive” to open it.

Step 4 –If you haven’t allowed iCloud storage yet, it will show a prompt to allow it to use iCloud Drive.

Step 5 –Just click on “Open Apple ID Preferences...” to open it.

If you have not yet used/created an Apple ID to log in to your Mac device, please do so first.

Step 6 –After logging in with your Apple ID, just make sure the “iCloud Drive” option is selected.

It takes some time for your Mac to read iCloud Drive.

Step 7 –Now, click on “Options…” to open the other Options page.

Step 8 –Here you will see a list of applications that can store data on the cloud. So make sure you check the absolutely necessary items such as Desktop Folders, Pages, System Preferences etc.

Step 9 –Click “Finish” to save the settings.

Note - iCloud space is only free to use up to 5GB, which is very small. However, you can easily increase this storage limit with a paid Apple icloud service. Here we have listed the prices below to give you a better understanding – UK: 79p (50GB), £2.49 (200GB), £6.99 (2TB)

US: 99c (50GB), $2.99 ​​(200GB), $9.99 (2TB)
• EURO: 99c (50GB), €2.99 (200GB), €9.99 (2TB)
• INDIA – ₹75 (50GB), ₹219 (200GB), ₹749 (2TB)
• All rates mentioned here are as of 23rd March w.r.t conversion rates and pricing. You will get the latest information from icloud plans.

Way 3 – Use other cloud drives

There are paid cloud drives such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive that you can use to back up your Mac’s data. However, unlike Time Machine or iCloud, it is not easy to restore your Mac device using this backup. In short, you have to set up the backup yourself. You know how these cloud solutions work on any device, they work on Mac too.

Way 4 – Using Web-Based Backup

The last one lets you use a web-based backup solution like Carbonite. It will create a backup of your Mac over the internet and store it in its servers. If needed, you can use the application to restore your system from an image stored on the server. Not only is this a great solution for individual users, organizations can safely create backups of their systems.

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