There is also a set of preferences you can adjust by selecting the onedrive menu bar item and clicking the threedot more button. To see storage information about your mac, click the apple menu in the topleft of your screen. Aimed at multimedia professionals, the caldigit av pro 2 is a welldesigned, macformatted external drive that comes in ssd and spinning disk versions, and includes both a usb hub and thunderbolt. Having the best external hard drive or ssd for your mac or pc is essential. You can also use icloud and icloud drive to store files, such as your photos, documents, and music. While using time machine is a great option, sometimes it helps to consider all your options for example, if youre looking to replace your macbook s hard drive, consider creating a disk image of your hard drive and store it on an external drive. Learn how to create a backup of the files on your mac. Find out which hard drive can help increase your storage or safely back up your mac. Once time machine is configured properly, your mac will backup hourly for the past 24 hours, daily for the past month and will save a weekly backup. Aimed at multimedia professionals, the caldigit av pro 2 is a welldesigned, mac formatted external drive that comes in ssd and spinning disk versions, and. Western digital my passport 4tb external hard drive.
Transfer speeds of up to 540mbs let you save and share larger files easily, and the lightweight design fits into your pocket or bag. We think it offers creatives the perfect balance of speed, reliability, portability and price for both mac and pc users. After you connect the device and select it as your backup disk, time machine automatically makes hourly. Back up your system or move data between computers with this 500gb samsung portable solidstate drive. To back up to an external hard drive time machine needs either a directly attached usb, thunderbolt or firewire external hard drive. A time capsule with a hard drive thats on the same network as your macbook. The drive can be used for automatic time machine backups on your mac, but you can also use the mirror option in the toolkit app to automatically back up individual folders so that theyre always. How to free up space on your mac by deleting old backups.
If you want to make use of your mac s thunderbolt port, then this is the best external hard drive for macs. Looking to add storage, or for a smart way to back up your mac. You just need to locate the apple mail backup location, as all your emails are stored automatically on your hard drive. Samsung t5 portable ssd 1 tb this small compact ssd drive from samsung comes with both a usbc to usbc cable and a usbc to usba, meaning its perfect to use with your macbook or mac. Depending on what model macbook pro you have and which hard drive, this cord could be usb, thunderbolt, or firewire. You can use all of these external hard drives with mac.
Select encrypt backup disk recommended, then click use as backup disk. Here are the best mac hard drives and external storage options in 2020. 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 worstcase scenario of a broken or stolen macbook. Time machine is the builtin backup feature of your mac.
Disk utility is within system preferences, or you can find it using spotlight. 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. This also allows you to restore time machine backups on windows. How to backup macbook pro to external hard drive, pro magic. We are using the topend config, which has two 10tb ironwolf pro. Amazons choice for backup drive macbook pro seagate portable 2tb external hard drive portable hdd usb 3. Backup plus portable drive for mac 4tb stds4000400 2year limited warranty. The 8 best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc. Cloning is complementary to backup methods like time machine, and i encourage you to do so if you have extra portable drives.
Compare portable, usb and external hard drive models for office and home and shop online. Best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc image credit. Well show you everything you need to know about the. The onedrive app runs as a menu bar item that includes sync status for files kept in the onedrive folder. How to backup macbook pro to an external hard drive guide. An encrypted backup is accessible only to users with the password. The best external hard drives for mac in 2020 pcmag. When you decide to backup your mac, its important to choose the right way to do it. Or choose apple menu system preferences, then click time machine. If you need instant crossplatform compatibility, and an array of color choices, youll be covered with the seagate backup plus slim 2tb. You can also clone your mac hard drive to an external drive. Called time machine, its the easiest way to back up your mac to an external hard drive. Here are the best mac hard drives and external storage options in.
How to create a bootable backup of your entire mac on an. To boot from your cloned backup, simply plug your drive into your mac, press the power button, and hold the option key right when the system turns on. Its fast 540 mbs read and write speeds are more than enough to transfer any file. Right now, our top pick for best external hard drive is the western digital my passport 4tb, which is a mechanical hard drive. Discover the world of external hard drives for mac. Best external hard drives for macs in 2020 techradar. Windows cant normally read mac formatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead. Like carbon copy cloner, it will create a fully bootable backup, and can update it with just the changes youve made since the last backup. Time machine has finished the first backup to macintosh hd. How to share an external hard drive between mac and windows. Its a complete backup solution, but you can use other backup methods as well. The 8 best external hard drives and ssds for mac and pc users in. Drive speed is measured in revolutions per minute rpm, based on how fast the drive can spin. If it is visible, then click the option to mount, which should make it visible on the desktop and in the external drives option in the finder menu.
Feel free to eject the drive when the process is complete. Even though mac computers are capable of reading hard drives that are formatted for windows, if you intend on using your external hdd as a bootable disk or want to use it to backup files with your mac s time machine, you must format it to be entirely mac compatible. From there you can just make the copy of the apple mail database and your backup will be stored securely. Time machine can also back up to a configured apple time capsule. Check apple s disk utility to see if an external drive is showing up. Open time machine preferences from the time machine menu in the menu bar. Product title external backup hard drive case 2tb usb 3. To see the size of a specific file or folder, click it once and then press commandi. Heres how you can locate your apple mail backup location. The first step to backing up your macbook pro is to connect your computer to an external hard drive. If you buy a new external hard drive, you may notice that working between mac and pc is an often difficult but it doesnt need to be. Once you plug in a hard drive and set up time machine, it will work automatically in the background, continuously saving copies of all your files, applications, and system files i.
Just choose which drive to back up, which drive to clone it onto, and the type of backup you want to perform. Macbook pro inch, 2020 macbook pro 16inch, 2019 macbook pro inch, 2016 2019. When apple released time machine, they introduced a deadsimple way to backup your mac. How to backup a mac to time machine with any hard drive. Local backups to an external hard drive or another computer on your network. Click select backup disk or select disk, or add or remove backup disk. Just plug in an external hard drive, and let it do the rest. We have a stepbystep guide to backing up with time machine here, but essentially you just need to do the following plug in hard drive or ssd.
You can even recover deleted files if you accidentally lose them. This small compact ssd drive from samsung comes with both a usbc to usbc cable and a usbc to usba, meaning its perfect to use with your macbook or mac. While its a great solution, i still have to remember to get my hard drive out on a regular basis, hook it up, and let it do its. For time machine backups, its good to use a drive that has at least twice the storage capacity of your mac. On apple laptops, like the macbook, macbook air, and macbook pro, time machine includes the added feature of creating local snapshots so that, if. I plugged the included usb cable into the drive, then its other end into a mac book pro model 10,1, up popped a dialog box asking if i wanted to use time. This reduced power draw helps preserve the battery life of the mac you plug the drive into. Find and open the folder where os x mail stores mail. The 10tb g drive desktop external hard drive will give you enough volume and lightning speed for a traditional drive, and comes preformatted for mac. Seagate backup plus hub for mac 8tb external hard drive desktop hdd usb 3. When you plug the hard drive into your computer, a popup box should appear that will ask you if youd like to backup your computer using apples builtin backup program, time machine. Heres what you need to know, along with our toprated apple friendly drives.