how to back up external hard drive time machine

Once both are ready, click on the Finder icon in your Dock, which is the blue smiley face. Then plug in the external drive you want to restore your backed-up files to.

If you ever need to do this yourself on a file or folder, the process is really simple-first, make sure your backup drive is either plugged into your Mac or on the same network (if it’s a wireless backup, like a Time Capsule). So what I did was use Time Machine’s “Restore to” option to copy his huge library onto an external drive, leaving him with some room left to grow within his Mac’s storage and getting his data back in the meantime. The problem? He’d added a bunch more files to his Mac in the meantime, and his drive was now too full to accommodate the Photos Library being copied back onto it. All’s I know is that it was time for…well, his Time Machine backup. Did his cat somehow manage to jump on the keyboard, press Command-Delete, and then empty the trash? Did his kids do it while just fumbling around? Who knows. Completely! Along with the rest of the contents of his Pictures folder. I recently ran across a client whose Photos Library had disappeared.

How to back up external hard drive time machine