You see it happen all the time.
Once you connect it with your Mac, you'll notice a box seeking confirmation on using it with Time Machine and whether or not you intend to encrypt the backup disk. While the backing up process may take hours to finish, here's how you can backup using Time Machine. This wikiHow teaches you how to back up the data and files on your Mac to an external hard drive and/or Apple's cloud-based storage service, iCloud. Connect your Mac to a formatted external hard drive. Connect the drive to your computer. The first is simply an extra layer to the recycle bin, and the second keeps a copy of any file moved to a pre-selected folder. In addition, the app can scan computer drives in search of missing files. Overall, Disk Drill is one of the best Mac backup software solutions available – as it is efficient, fast, portable, comprehensive and easy to use.
Bill: Oh man, you look panicked. What happened?
Stephen: My hard drive failed Monday night. I lost everything. Pictures, emails, my resume…
Bill: You didn't have it backed up?
Stephen: Nope.
Mac Laptop Backup
Most of the time people aren't prepared for their hard drive to fail, and most of the time they lose everything. To avoid being the next Stephen, follow the steps below to back up your computer.
Buy a Backup Hard Drive
One of the difficulties of making backups is that those backups take up a lot of space on your computer. In order to have enough room to back up your computer, you might want to buy an external hard drive. Don't worry though, an external hard drive on Amazon.com with one terabyte of space runs for less than $100.00. To give you an idea of the massive size of a one terabyte hard drive consider this: a one terabyte hard drive will hold up to 200,000 pictures or up to 250,000 songs. Mac office excel templates. Here are a couple of places you can buy an external hard drive for a good price:
Apple offers its customers a range of options for backing up pictures and files on Mac desktop computers or MacBook laptops. While Apple's solutions are good for Apple, customers should consider additional backup options if they want to ensure their files are truly secure. If you want to make use of your Mac's Thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for Macs. It provides twice the speeds of standard USB 3.0 drives.
Backup Mac Osx
Backup a Windows 7 Computer
Here's how to back up your Windows 7 computer.
- Plug-in your external hard drive to your computer.
- Double click on Computer. A list of drives will open up in a separate window.
- Right-click on your main hard drive and click 'Properties'.
- Click the 'Tools' tab at the top.
- Click 'Back up now…'.
- Under the window 'Back up or restore your files' click 'Set up backup'.
- Click your backup drive in the 'Select where you want to save your backup' window and click Next. If you have an external hard drive you would select that here.
- Windows will ask what you want to back up. Picking 'Let Windows choose' will work fine for most people. If you prefer more control you can choose your folders by picking 'Let me choose'.
- Under 'How often do you want to back up?' schedule the backup frequency. For someone who's files are a matter of life or death you can schedule for every day. For others, once a week should suffice.
- Click 'OK' and your first back up should begin. You may notice the first backup takes a long time. Don't worry because after the first backup Windows will only backup files that have changed and will be much faster. Once you see your first backup start you are good to go.
Backup a Mac OS X Computer
Here's how to back up your Mac OS X computer.
- Plug in your external hard drive to your computer.
- A popup will appear asking if you want to use this backup with time machine. Click 'Use as Backup Disk'. If for some reason a popup doesn't open go to System Preferences >> Time Machine and click 'Select Disk…' to choose your external hard drive.
- That's it. Time Machine will now take hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily backups for the last month, and weekly backups until your external hard drive is full. When this happens Time Machine will start deleting your oldest backups to make room for new ones. Also, just like Windows, the first backup may take a while, but subsequent backups will be much faster.
You see it happen all the time.
Once you connect it with your Mac, you'll notice a box seeking confirmation on using it with Time Machine and whether or not you intend to encrypt the backup disk. While the backing up process may take hours to finish, here's how you can backup using Time Machine. This wikiHow teaches you how to back up the data and files on your Mac to an external hard drive and/or Apple's cloud-based storage service, iCloud. Connect your Mac to a formatted external hard drive. Connect the drive to your computer. The first is simply an extra layer to the recycle bin, and the second keeps a copy of any file moved to a pre-selected folder. In addition, the app can scan computer drives in search of missing files. Overall, Disk Drill is one of the best Mac backup software solutions available – as it is efficient, fast, portable, comprehensive and easy to use.
Bill: Oh man, you look panicked. What happened?
Stephen: My hard drive failed Monday night. I lost everything. Pictures, emails, my resume…
Bill: You didn't have it backed up?
Stephen: Nope.
Mac Laptop Backup
Most of the time people aren't prepared for their hard drive to fail, and most of the time they lose everything. To avoid being the next Stephen, follow the steps below to back up your computer.
Buy a Backup Hard Drive
One of the difficulties of making backups is that those backups take up a lot of space on your computer. In order to have enough room to back up your computer, you might want to buy an external hard drive. Don't worry though, an external hard drive on Amazon.com with one terabyte of space runs for less than $100.00. To give you an idea of the massive size of a one terabyte hard drive consider this: a one terabyte hard drive will hold up to 200,000 pictures or up to 250,000 songs. Mac office excel templates. Here are a couple of places you can buy an external hard drive for a good price:
Apple offers its customers a range of options for backing up pictures and files on Mac desktop computers or MacBook laptops. While Apple's solutions are good for Apple, customers should consider additional backup options if they want to ensure their files are truly secure. If you want to make use of your Mac's Thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for Macs. It provides twice the speeds of standard USB 3.0 drives.
Backup Mac Osx
Backup a Windows 7 Computer
Here's how to back up your Windows 7 computer.
- Plug-in your external hard drive to your computer.
- Double click on Computer. A list of drives will open up in a separate window.
- Right-click on your main hard drive and click 'Properties'.
- Click the 'Tools' tab at the top.
- Click 'Back up now…'.
- Under the window 'Back up or restore your files' click 'Set up backup'.
- Click your backup drive in the 'Select where you want to save your backup' window and click Next. If you have an external hard drive you would select that here.
- Windows will ask what you want to back up. Picking 'Let Windows choose' will work fine for most people. If you prefer more control you can choose your folders by picking 'Let me choose'.
- Under 'How often do you want to back up?' schedule the backup frequency. For someone who's files are a matter of life or death you can schedule for every day. For others, once a week should suffice.
- Click 'OK' and your first back up should begin. You may notice the first backup takes a long time. Don't worry because after the first backup Windows will only backup files that have changed and will be much faster. Once you see your first backup start you are good to go.
Backup a Mac OS X Computer
Here's how to back up your Mac OS X computer.
- Plug in your external hard drive to your computer.
- A popup will appear asking if you want to use this backup with time machine. Click 'Use as Backup Disk'. If for some reason a popup doesn't open go to System Preferences >> Time Machine and click 'Select Disk…' to choose your external hard drive.
- That's it. Time Machine will now take hourly backups for the last 24 hours, daily backups for the last month, and weekly backups until your external hard drive is full. When this happens Time Machine will start deleting your oldest backups to make room for new ones. Also, just like Windows, the first backup may take a while, but subsequent backups will be much faster.
*Note: Time Machine does offer some options for customizing your backups. If you want to exclude files or include an additional hard drive go to System Preferences >> Time Machine and click 'Options'.
Best drive for mac time machine. I know some people have operating systems other than Windows 7 and Mac OS X. Here is an article to help you if you have a different operating system.
Do you have any other tips to help people backup their files? Have you ever lost everything to a failed hard drive? Let us know in the comments.
Resources
How to Use Backup and Restore in Windows 7
Mac 101: Time Machine
How to Backup and Restore Your Mac Using Time Machine
Images courtesy of Wikipedia and IconArchive Mac boot disk.