I am wanting to factory reset my MBP as it's got so much stuff on which I don't need but I am wondering what is the best way to backup all the data I need? Would it be via online service such as Google Drive etc?
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Backing up my MBP
- Thread starter Bradley Easton
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I'd suggest setting up a Time Machine backup. I'm always a fan of local backups.
Failing that, you can get 50GB of iCloud Drive for 70p a month, or get 5GB free through Google Drive as you said.
Failing that, you can get 50GB of iCloud Drive for 70p a month, or get 5GB free through Google Drive as you said.
Might be a stupid question, but regarding iCloud Drive - does this back up all my photos stored on my Mac? Or do I need to put the photos in a certain location/folder?
It's like Dropbox -- you get a folder saying 'iCloud Drive' in Finder, and you just drag in anything that you want.
No the best way would be with an external hard drive, uploading a lot of data to the cloud may take many many hours depending on your internet upload speeds.
The best backup you can have is a BOOTABLE cloned backup created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Get an external drive that is equal in size (or larger than) your internal drive.
Then run either of the above on it, and update your backup at regular intervals.
With a backup that's fully bootable, if you ever experience an "I can't boot!" moment, all you'll need to do is connect your backup and chances are you'll be back up and running in a couple of minutes, and can work on the problem from there...
You CAN'T do this with a Time Machine backup.
Get an external drive that is equal in size (or larger than) your internal drive.
Then run either of the above on it, and update your backup at regular intervals.
With a backup that's fully bootable, if you ever experience an "I can't boot!" moment, all you'll need to do is connect your backup and chances are you'll be back up and running in a couple of minutes, and can work on the problem from there...
You CAN'T do this with a Time Machine backup.
If you want to do a factory reset, wouldn't it be best if you simply manually copy all of your stuff to an external hard drive? Then you can reset the MacBook to factory settings with a new install, create a new account and copy stuff over again.