Follow Mac backup steps with Time Machine below. It's one of the easiest way to save your Mac data to SSD or HDD, including mac apps, media files, DVD backup, documents and other. Time Machine is a built-in tool on Mac, which works with internal and external disk drives to backup and restore data for macOS.
How to Backup MacBook Air/Pro/iMac to External Hard Drive with Time Machine
We also provide tips and fixes for Mac backup problems, Mac not recognizing external hard drive error and more for your reference. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to backup Mac to external hard drive (Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba etc.) with or without Time Machine, whether they are movies, videos, music, movies on DVDs, iTunes library, iTunes purchases/rentals, Mac apps, documents, or games. You can fix slow Wi-Fi or no Internet connection problems on your Mac.If you haven't made any backup for your Mac, you'll regret when your most important data is lost or deleted accidentally.
It will be named like this: “year-month-day-random numbners.inProgress” like “xx-xx-xx-xxxxxx.inProgress”.
Open your virus or malware software setting and ensure that your backup disk (“Backups.backupdb”) is excluded from automatic virus or malware scanning.
If you are experiencing this, try the steps below: When you go to System Preferences > Time Machine, you may see a message saying “Scanning xx items,” “Preparing,” or “Preparing backup” message. Sometimes you may experience an issue where a very long preparation phase may occur in Time Machine and it may seem to be stuck.
And run First Aid on the Time Machine backup disk. You may want to repair it using Disk Utility. Ensure that your backup disk has enough available storage.Select it in Finder and click Get Info.
It also supports the Mac OS Extended format (Journaled) format. APFS or APFS Encrypted disks are the preferred formats. Time Machine can’t back up to a disk formatted for Windows (FAT and NTFS).
You can check for updates and update your Mac by going to System Preferences > Software Update. Ensure that your Mac is running the latest version of macOS.Make sure that your backup drive is properly connected (if you are using a network, ensure that your Mac and disk are on the same network) and turned on and plugged into a power source.Restart your Mac and then try again (Apple menu > Restart).There can be several reasons why you may have issues with it. Backups are great way to keep your data protected.
Time Machine is Apple’s built-in backup technology.