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External Hardrive For Mac

By default, your Mac starts up from its built-in hard disk, but a startup disk can be any storage device that contains an operating system compatible with your Mac. For example, if you install macOS on an internal or external drive, your Mac can recognize that drive as a startup disk. You can then follow the steps in this article to start up from it.

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Use Startup Disk preferences

When you use Startup Disk preferences to select a startup disk, your Mac starts up from that disk until you choose a different one.

  1. Choose Apple () menu > System Preferences, then click Startup Disk.
  2. Click and enter your administrator password.
  3. Select your startup disk, then restart your Mac.

If you see a message that your security settings do not allow this Mac to use an external startup disk, check the External Boot setting in Startup Security Utility.

Use Startup Manager

When you use Startup Manager to select a startup disk, your Mac starts up from that disk once, then returns to using the disk selected in Startup Disk preferences.

  1. Press and hold the Option key immediately after turning on or restarting your Mac.
  2. Release the Option key when you see the Startup Manager window.
    If your Mac is protected by a firmware password, you can release the key when you're asked to enter the password.
  3. Select your startup disk, then click the arrow under its icon, or press Return.
    If you press and hold the Control key during this step, your selection is saved in Startup Disk preferences, so it persists until you change it.

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If your Mac is using OS X Lion 10.7.3 or later, you can also use this method to start up from your Time Machine backup disk. Startup Manager identifies your Time Machine backup as ”EFI Boot.”

If you can't select your startup disk or start up from it

Check for these possibilities if you can't see your disk in Startup Disk preferences or Startup Manager, or your Mac won't start up from it.

Check for a valid operating system on the startup disk

Make sure that your startup disk is using a version of macOS that's compatible with your Mac. You might need to reinstall macOS on that disk.

Check startup security settings

If you're using a Mac that has the Apple T2 Security Chip, check the settings in Startup Security Utility. These settings determine whether your Mac can start up from another disk.

Check for Option ROM firmware

If you're in Startup Manager and can't see your startup disk, press Option-Shift-Command-Period. If that works, do this each time you want to start up from the device or from a startup disk connected to it.

To enhance system security, Mac computers with up-to-date software don’t show devices that have Option ROM firmware until you press these keys in Startup Manager to load the firmware. On Mac models from early 2015 or earlier, you can disable this security feature to load Option ROM firmware automatically. This removes an important protection against potential unauthorized access to your Mac by other people with physical access to it.

Raid system for mac. (When you take the space of a storage device and divide it during formatting, you are creating partitions.)Click on the checkbox next to the disks you want to include in the RAID.

  1. Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
  2. Type sudo nvram enable-legacy-orom-behavior=1, then press Return.
    To undo this command, enter sudo nvram -d enable-legacy-orom-behavior.

If you're using a firmware password on your Mac, the ability to load Option ROM firmware automatically or manually is disabled as an additional security protection. If you want to remove this additional protection but keep your firmware password:

  1. Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
  2. Type this command, then press Return:
    sudo firmwarepasswd -setmode command -allow-oroms
    To undo this command, enter sudo firmwarepasswd -setmode command.
  3. Type the administrator password for your user account, then press Return.
  4. Type your firmware password, then press Return.
  5. Restart your Mac.

If you read my previous post about how to format an external hard drive, you know that I bought a 2TB Seagate Expansion external drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk — one for Mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to backup your Mac data to an external drive. You should backup your Mac on a regular basis, especially if you’re planning to perform macOS updates.

External Hardrive For Macbook

I did this several weeks ago while preparing my MacBook Pro for the High Sierra update. You may also be interested in taking a look at the issues I encountered during that process just in case you also want to upgrade your Mac to the latest macOS.

Please note that the backup tool that I used is Time Machine, a built-in app provided by Apple. If you want to backup your Mac data without using Time Machine, there are also alternatives worth considering.

Where is Time Machine on Mac?

As I said, Time Machine is a built-in app within macOS ever since OS X 10.5. To find it, click on the Apple logo on the top left corner of your screen, then select System Preferences.

In the Preferences Pane, you’ll see the app located between “Date & Time” and “Accessibility”.

What does Time Machine Backup?

Time Machine is definitely the easiest way to backup Mac. In addition, the app is created and recommended by Apple. Once you have a timely backup, it’s incredibly easy to restore all or part of your data in case of accidental deletion or a hard drive crash.

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So, what kind of data does Time Machine backup? Everything! Photos, videos, documents, applications, system files, accounts, preferences, messages, you name it: They all can be backed up by Time Machine. You can then restore your data from a Time Machine snapshot. To do so, first open Finder, then Applications, and click on Time Machine to continue.

Be aware that the recovery process can be only be conducted when your Mac is bootable.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Backing up Mac to an External Hard Drive

Note: the screenshots below are taken based on macOS 10.12.5 Sierra. If your Mac has High Sierra or an older version, differences may exist, but the process should look similar to what’s displayed below.

Step 1: Connect your external hard drive.

First, use the USB cable (or USC-C cable if you’re on a newest Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports) that comes with your external drive to connect that drive to your Mac. Once the disk icon shows up on your desktop (if it doesn’t, open Finder > Preferences > General, and here make sure you’ve checked “External disks” to let them show on the desktop), move on to Step 2.

Fire wall for mac. Mar 23, 2016  OS X: About the application firewall. Configuring the Application Firewall in Mac OS X v10.5. Make sure you have updated to Mac OS X v10.5.1 or later. Then, use these steps to enable the application firewall: Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.

Step 2: Select the disk for backup.

Now open Time Machine (I tell you how above) and select the disk you want to use. I have partitioned my Seagate drive into two new volumes, “Backup” and “Personal Use”, as you see from the screenshot. I chose “Backup”.

Step 3: Confirm backup (optional).

If you have used another disk for backup before, Time Machine will ask you whether you want to stop backing up to the previous disk and use the new one instead. It’s up to you. I selected “Replace”.

Step 4: Wait until the process is complete.

Now Time Machine will start to backup all your data. The progress bar gives you an estimate of how much time is left before the backup is complete. I found it a bit inaccurate: Initially, it said “About 5 hours remaining”, but it only took two hours to finish. It’s worth noting that the remaining time may vary from case to case depending on the write speed of your external hard drive.

It says I have to wait 5 hours

After about an hour and a half, it says only 15 minutes remaining

Step 5: Eject your external drive and unplug it.

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When the backup procedure is completed, don’t rush to disconnect your device as this could cause potential disk problems. Instead, go back to the main desktop, locate the volume that your external hard drive represents, right-click and select Eject. Then, you can safely unplug the device and put it in a safe place.

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One More Thing

Like any other hardware device, an external hard drive will fail sooner or later. It is advisable to make a copy of the data on your external drive — as they say, a “backup of your backups”! One good option is to use cloud storage services. I now use IDrive (read our full review here), and I really like it because the app is so easy to use, and it also allows me to back up my Facebook albums and photos automatically. Backblaze and Carbonite are also popular options in the market, though I have yet to give them a try.

External Hard Drive For Apple

I hope you find this tutorial helpful. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of data backup these days, especially when my mid-2012 MacBook hard drive died all of a sudden. I’ve also seen cases where my friend’s computer and hard drive failed. You can imagine their desperation. Without a proper backup, it’s really hard to restore data. Although you could try a third-party recovery program like Prosoft Data Rescue and Stellar Mac Data Recovery, chances are they won’t get all your lost data back.

Anyway, the main takeaway I want you to have from this article is this: Backup your Mac with Time Machine and create a second or third copy of those backups if you can.