How to back up your Mac: A guide for people who’d rather not

If you find backing up your Mac tedious, I’m not here to tell you it’s not. But let’s face it: in today’s world, our most valuable assets are often digital, and backing them up is simply essential.

As someone who avoided backups for years, I’ve been there. To make peace with the process, I had to find tools that are truly convenient and create a system that doesn’t drive me crazy. So, let me share the best ways to back up Mac, depending on the backup destination of your choice.

How to backup your Mac: Quick solutions

To save you time, I've organized the key solutions from this article into this handy table. If you feel confident, just use these instructions. If you need a more detailed guide, click on the link in the left column to jump to the solution. I also share my personal tips and stories there.

Solution type	Your guide
Backup with Time Machine	Connect an external drive, go to System Settings > General > Time Machine, and select the drive.
Backup with Get Backup Pro (to back up the entire Mac or separate files)	Download and open Get Backup Pro, select backup type, add files, schedule if needed, and click Run.
Manual backup to external drive	Connect an external drive, copy files manually, and organize as needed.
Sync files	Download and open ChronoSync Express, set folders for sync, and create a schedule for regular backups.
Cloud backup (Dropbox, etc.)	Use the app’s settings to select folders and enable auto-backups (e.g., Dropbox > Preferences > Backups).
Create a clone	Open Disk Drill, choose Byte-by-byte Backup, select the destination, and start cloning.
Create a bootable backup	Use Disk Utility to partition a drive, add macOS installer, and save a backup with Get Backup Pro.

Why you should back up your Mac

It’s important to know how to back up Mac to iCloud, external drive, or another storage, and do so regularly. Even if your files are well-organized, you never know when a disaster might strike. 

A few reasons you might lose your files or progress:

• Electricity shutdowns
• Hard drive malfunction
• Cloud sync issues 
• Accidental file overwrites
• File deletions
• Ransomware

Even if nothing happens, you might need a version of the file you’re working with as it was a few weeks ago. This would be impossible to do without a proper backup system. With backups, however, it takes just a few seconds. 

Considering that a Time Machine backup to iCloud or other backup options are practically free, there are no reasons to delay setting up an OSX backup.

How to back up your Mac using Time Machine

Time Machine is a default utility that lets you back up your Mac to an external hard drive for free (you do need to buy the external hard drive though). 

You barely need to configure anything. Time Machine will automatically keep hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for as long as your hard drive space allows. If the space on the hard drive is maxed out, the oldest backups will be deleted accordingly. For the backups to work properly, the hard drive should be connected at all times. 

To set up Time Machine: 

1. Connect an external hard drive through USB.  
2. Go to System Settings ➙ General ➙ Time Machine.
3. Select your storage drive.
4. Follow the instructions provided.

You can see Time Machine progress at any time by clicking its menu bar icon. If you’d like to change backup frequency, you can do so in Time Machine settings. 

Overall, Time Machine is a good Mac backing up option that covers all the basics. 

My experience with Time Machine and its alternatives

When I first started making backups, Time Machine was my go-to tool. Over time, though, I ran into some shortcomings that I couldn't get around.

For example, the backups were quite large (it's not my problem, that's just how Time Machine works). Second, sometimes I needed to back up individual files or folders, and with Time Machine, it's not convenient: instead of selecting what to include, you have to exclude everything you don’t need, which can be a hassle.

Lastly, restoring some specific files was cumbersome. For example, if I wanted to recover a single photo from the Photos app, I’d have to restore the entire library, which was a complete mess.

So, I started testing alternative apps and came across Get Backup Pro, which has become my go-to backup tool for several years now.

Get Backup Pro is a customizable and reliable backup utility to prevent any data-loss catastrophe. It offers four backup methods: simple copy, clone (bootable), incremental, and versioned, and its archives take up to 60% less space than Time Machine's.

It supports selective file backups and folder synchronization between Macs. You can also set a schedule that works for you. And if a disaster strikes, recover your files to any Mac, even if it doesn’t have Get Backup Pro installed.

To back up with Get Backup Pro: 

1. Launch Get Backup Pro.
2. Select the type of backup you want.
3. Pick any apps or files for backup (use File+ and Apps Data+).
4. Use the cog icon at the bottom to set the schedule.
5. Click Run.

I believe that Get Backup Pro can be a great alternative to Time Machine for many of you. Just give it a try.

How to restore a Mac from a backup

When you have a Mac backup with Time Machine in place, it’s easy to recover your whole Mac, a specific app, or a few files as needed.

The best utility to use is Migration Assistant, which every Mac features by default: 

1. Connect your external drive to Mac.
2. Open Migration Assistant from the Utilities folder.
3. Select to transfer information “From a Mac, Time Machine or Startup disk”.
4. Pick your Time Machine backup and Continue.
5. Select the information you want to transfer.
6. Click Continue.

There’s also another way to recover a specific version of a file with Time Machine: 

1. Have a folder with missing files open.
2. Click on the Time Machine icon in the menu bar.
3. Select “Browse Time Machine backups”.
4. Scroll back to where your files were in the state you want.
5. Select the file and restore.

You can drag and drop the file where you want it, or simply click Restore and it will appear in the folder where it was before.

How to back up your Mac to external hard drive manually

If you have an external hard drive and want to back up files, you don’t have to use Time Machine. In fact, you can simply copy certain files to it when needed. Just open your external drive in Finder and copy-paste some files or folders in there. That way you can maintain the backup in the state you want and on your own custom schedule. Set a reminder to repeat the backup every once in a while, and done.

If you prefer a "copying" backup method, ChronoSync Express is the perfect solution when you need to keep a few files and folders synced between Macs or backed up. You can even create more than one backup of various files, and they don’t have to be on the same schedule. Set exactly when certain tasks need to happen and connect to other Macs or remote servers in just a few clicks. 

How to back up to Dropbox, OneDrive, or Google Drive

If you’re paying for a third-party cloud storage tool like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive, you can use it to back up your Mac as well, with some restrictions. 

Here’s how to back up Mac with Dropbox: 

1. Open preferences on your Dropbox desktop app.
2. Go to Backups.
3. Select “Set up”.
4. Choose the folders and files you’d like to back up.
5. Click “Set up”.

If you’re wondering how to back up Mac to external hard drive, Dropbox will prompt you to use it as a backup location when connected.

Here’s how to back up data on Mac with OneDrive: 

1. Go to Preferences in OneDrive in menu bar.
2. Switch to the Backups tab.
3. Select “Manage Back up”.
4. Choose any folder.
5. Click “Start backup”.

For Google Drive, there’s no special backup functionality. However, you can mount your Google Drive storage as a local disk and keep your files there, which would be automatically synced with the cloud and all your other devices.

How to clone your Mac

Apart from backups, there’s another way to keep your Mac’s files safe — cloning. Backups are continuous; cloning takes a snapshot of your Mac in time, letting you restore everything to that version later.

At this point, I’d also recommend considering creating a bootable clone. Its unique feature is that you can copy it to another machine without losing anything. I’ve only created bootable clones a few times, but they’ve been incredibly useful. For instance, I made one as a precaution before taking my Mac to a repair service. It gave me peace of mind in case anything happened to my laptop during the repair process.

Since your Mac lacks a proper clone-making utility, try using Disk Drill to create a byte-to-byte clone of your Mac. 

Disk Drill is a top-rated data recovery and backup app for Mac. It not only brings back lost files regardless of the cause (e.g. disk errors, data corruption) but also lets you create complete snapshots of your Mac in just a few clicks. Besides, you can free up disk space, find duplicate files, shred sensitive data, protect your files, and monitor hard drive health. 

To create a clone of your Mac with Disk Drill: 

1. Download and open Disk Drill.
2. Select Byte-by-byte Backup.
3. Pick the external drive to clone your Mac to.
4. Continue with the backup process as directed.

One thing to do before you create a Mac clone, however, is to optimize and clean your Mac from useless old files. You can do that easily with CleanMyMac, a wonderful Mac care app. It features one-click scans for all kinds of improvements, from malware checks to getting rid of junk files to privacy monitoring. You can also uninstall apps without leaving leftover files behind and update all apps from a single screen.

To optimize your Mac before cloning with CleanMyMac: 

1. Launch the app.
2. Select Smart Care in the sidebar.
3. Click Scan.
4. Review details on everything the scan has found, check all the necessary items, and run the removal process.

   

How to create a bootable backup of your Mac

Some say that the best way to back up MacBooks is with bootable backups. A bootable backup is a complete backup of your Mac that contains a macOS installer file, so that it can start even without the correct macOS present. 

The process of creating bootable backups is more involved than other types of backups, but they are more bulletproof as well. Here’s how to create one without much hassle: 

1. Open Disk Utility from the Utilities folder.
2. Connect an external drive.
3. Partition the drive.
4. Download the macOS installer by opening Terminal and typing softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer
5. Place the installer in one part of the backup volume.
6. Back your Mac up with Get Backup Pro to another part of the external drive.

My stress-free system for backing up my Mac

Once you’ve got the technical side set up, the next step is getting yourself organized. For me, that required a bit of discipline. At first, I’d forget to back up or misplace the disk somewhere around the apartment. Here’s what helped me:

1. Treat the drive as part of my work equipment. Just like I keep my mouse next to my laptop, I learned to keep the disk nearby and take it with me if I work not from home. Now, when I start working, I automatically plug the drive into my MacBook.
2. Automate backups. Using Get Backup Pro, I set up a schedule for automatic backups. Once it’s configured, I don’t have to think about it anymore.
3. Friday reminders. Every Friday morning, my calendar reminds me to make a backup. If I’ve missed a backup during the week for any reason, I use Friday to catch up.

These small habits made backing up a stress-free part of my routine.

All the apps I use to back up and maintain my Mac (Get Backup Pro, ChronoSync Express, Disk Drill, CleanMyMac) come from Setapp, a platform with 250+ curated apps for Mac and iOS that cover every possible use case. Setapp is free for new members with a seven-day trial.

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