About this article
- Best External Hard Drive For Macbook Air
- What Size External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro 15
- New Hard Drive For Macbook
This article includes instructions and suggestions for storing, organizing, and backing up files on your MacBook hard drive. It is intended for any student or employee with a MacBook.
I don't know anything about the hard drive you've selected but I do know that it will fit into your hard drive bay - the 750GB indicates the amount of storage. While you can use two hard drives, one in the hard drive bay and one in the optical bay, I wouldn't recommend it in your case. We’ve handpicked 5 best SSDs for MacBook Pro models from 2011-2015 and reviewed them. Simply swap out the hard drive for the SSD and you’re good to go. Best External Hard Drives for. WD My Passport For Mac (Best Overall) The Western Digital 2TB My Passport For Mac is the perfect.
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Fig 2. Select hard drive icon and Users to access Home folder
Where are your files?
You have full administrative rights to your laptop. That means you have the ability to save your files just about anywhere on your laptop's hard drive. You may have saved things, intentionally or unintentionally, to locations other than the ones we configured as described below. It's up to you to find and manage those folders and files. Every WSU MacBook hard drive is set up the same way:
- On a MacBook, all of the space on the single hard drive is assigned to one partition called MacBook Pro/Air # where the number represents the year it was distributed (e.g., MacBook Pro 13). Open your hard drive by double-clicking the MacBook Pro/Air # drive icon on your desktop (Figure 1).
- You will see several folders on what is called the root of the hard drive. Do not delete or rename any of these folders.
- Inside the Users folder, you will find your Home folder (Figure 2).
About the Home folder
Your Home folder is a special folder on your hard drive set up just for you. This is where you should save any personal or school-related files on your laptop. To help you keep your files organized, WSU created some sub-folders in your Home folder (e.g., Documents, Music, Pictures). You can use these folders if you wish or you can create your own. You can also create sub-folders within these folders (e.g., a Courses folder inside your Documents folder). Build a folder structure that works for you.
What's a default save location?
Some applications have default save locations for files you create using that application. For example, Microsoft Word opens a specific folder in your Home directory the first time you Save a document and every time you select Save As. WSU has already set the default save location of many of the applications that came installed on your MacBook. For example, the default save location for Word is your Documents folder in your Home directory. When you install applications, a default save location is selected automatically or you are asked to select one during the installation process. You want the default save location to be a folder in your Home directory. For example, when you install Apple iTunes, it will use your Music folder in your Home directory. Sometimes, an application will pick a very strange and out of the way default save location. Keep your eyes on this as you install applications and change the default save location if needed. Also, be careful about deleting or renaming existing folders in your Home directory if they are default save locations for an application.
How do I access the Home folder?
From the hard drive icon
- Double-click the MacBook Pro/Air # drive icon on your desktop
- Open the Users folder
- Open the Home folder. It's the one with the icon that looks like a house and that is named with your username (Figure 2).
From the Go menu
- Select the Go menu
- Select Home. This opens up the home folder and displays its contents.
About the sub-folders in your Home folder
Documents, Music, Pictures, and Movies
These are folders that we created for you thinking that this might be a nice way for you to organize your files. If this works for you, great. If you want to create new folders with new names, that's fine too. However, keep in mind that these folders are default save locations for various applications. Even if you don't want to use them, please don't delete them for awhile until you are sure you have your own folder structure and default save locations worked out.
Applications
You may or may not have such a folder depending on what applications are installed on you MacBook. Don't confuse this Applications folder in your Home directory with the one that contains all of your installed applications. They are two different folders. This one simply stores personal data and files associated with certain applications. For example, the default storage location for the screen shots you capture using TechSmith SnagIt, a screen capture program, is a sub-folder in your Applications folder in your Home directory. The actual SnagIt application itself is stored in another location. For most applications, you can change their default save locations if you wish, but always check this Applications folder to see if there is anything in there you want to back up and retain.
Desktop
The Desktop folder in your Home directory contains all the folders, files, and shortcuts found out on your desktop. Some people like to store things, lots of things, right on their desktop. They save files, folders, and shortcuts to applications right out on the desktop. If this method works for you and you want to replicate it on another MacBook, you will need to back up the Desktop folder and then copy and paste it to your Home directory on the other machine. Note that your shortcuts will not work on the new laptop if the applications they link to are not it the same place. Using external hard drive on macbook air. The fastest way to restore them is to delete them and recreate them on the new laptop.
Downloads
This folder contains any application update, printer driver, or other software or hardware-related file you ever downloaded from the web. The vast majority of these files do not need to be retained because you will probably never use them again. However, this folder may also contain manuals, journal articles, image files, and other useful, downloaded documents or media that you do want to retain. Take a look through your Downloads folder regularly. Delete anything you don't need and move anything important to another folder to better organize it. Ideally, your Downloads folder should be empty.
Public
Because Mac OS X is a multi-user operating system, the Public folder is there to allow you to store files that would be accessible to other people who log on to your MacBook. Because no one but you typically logs on to your laptop, this folder isn't very useful. Don't delete it just in case you might need it someday.
Backing up your files
There are several ways that you can back up the files in your Home direcory:
- Drag-and-drop or copy-paste your entire Home folder to network, cloud, or external storage
- Pick and choose individual folders and files within your Home directory to drag-and-drop or Copy-Paste to network, cloud, or external storage
Restoring your files
To restore your files to a new MacBook, reverse the process you used to back them up:
- Drag-and-drop or copy-paste your entire Home folder from network, cloud, or external storage to the same locations on your new MacBook
- Drag-and-drop or copy-paste individual folders and files from network, cloud, or external storage to the same locations on your new MacBook
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Getting a new, more capacious external hard drive for Mac is good idea. Let’s admit it: cloud storages aren’t for everybody. After all, a “cloud” is just another term for somebody else’s computer. And they cost money. On the other hand, you could upgrade your Mac’s current drive but this is a too extreme approach in complexity. So below we’ve collected a few tips to help you choose the best external hard drive for Mac so you can get most value and a bigger bang for your buck.
But let’s start off with the list of basic parameters. These will outline your search for backup hard drive for Mac:
- Storage capacity
- Data security and backup
- USB speed and data transfer speed
- Raid configuration
- Protective physical layer
- Buffer size
- Failure rate stats
- Warranty
- And yeah, cost, obviously
Tip # 1. Decide between SSD and HDD
External storage solutions come in these 2 varieties. SSD (solid state drives) are like big USB flash drives with multiple memory chips to store data, whereas HDDs are rotating magnetic disks. If you need more room to store gigabytes of data (videos or photos), you should consider getting an HDD. If your purpose is to get more memory for your Mac’s operating system and apps, then an SSD would be just the right option.
SSD: more speedy, more resistant to shocks, thinner (lighter)
HDD: slower, louder, offer more capacity, cheaper (per 1 GB of storage)
To make your choice even trickier, there also hybrid drives. These are regular HDDs with an SSD memory block attached, so you get the best of both worlds — speed and capacity within one device. At this point, think why do you need an external hard drive for your Mac in the first place: if it’s for backup and storing the sensitive data, simply go with an HDD.
HDD: slower, louder, offer more capacity, cheaper (per 1 GB of storage)
To make your choice even trickier, there also hybrid drives. These are regular HDDs with an SSD memory block attached, so you get the best of both worlds — speed and capacity within one device. At this point, think why do you need an external hard drive for your Mac in the first place: if it’s for backup and storing the sensitive data, simply go with an HDD.
Tip # 2. Free up space on your existing drive
Before getting an external Mac storage device, plow through the garbage on your existing one. This might save you dozens of gigabytes worth of data. For the most part, it’s old downloads, large media files (and their duplicates), application cache, old iOS backups and, finally, old apps you never use.
In my experience, the best cleanup results are achieved with a dedicated app. I was skeptical about Mac cleaning apps until I came across CleanMyMac X, as it’s the easiest of all. And really does the job as advertised. My first scan got me around 50 GB back under wrongly deleted volume — I was wondering where my disk space was going!
Here you can download the free version from developer’s site.
Tip # 3. Consider getting a NAS external hard-drive for Mac
There are lots of alternatives even within the HDD domain. If you need to process anything over 2 TB of storage, consider a NAS drive. Network-Attached-Storage (NAS) is a shared storage connected to your network router that everyone within your network can access. It’s a good solution for manipulating large size data, like your media backups.
How do they work? NAS boxes are connected to your router via an Ethernet cable. It’s worth mentioning, that some NAS drives are Mac-friendly and pre-configured to store Mac’s native Time Machine backups. This comes handy to free your macOS from extra copies of itself.
Apple’s Airport Time Capsule (though now discontinued by Apple) is a pretty expensive NAS solution, basically, a WI-FI router and NAS drive in one body. What’s good about it is its native integration with Mac, which makes the messy backup business at least partly human. It can even backup from with multiple Mac hard drives within your network.
Tip # 4. Read about RAID drives before buying HDD for Mac
Having to choose external hard drive for Mac, take a minute to learn about RAID drives. RAID are multiple hard drives that can be combined in one set. If combined properly, 2 hard drives may double write and read speeds because the data gets split between the two. Variations of RAIDs (RAID0, RAID5 etc) specify how exactly the data is split between your Mac external hard drive.
One more use is protection against data loss. Should one drive fail for some reason, the data will be duplicated on a second one. Also, the space issue. 2 hard disks will store 2 times more data, so from your Mac’s perspective, it will look like one single HDD twice as capacious.
Should you bother with RAID when choosing best external hard drive for Mac? Probably not, unless you’re using a ton of data and a quick data extraction is critical to you. For individual use, standard HDD will do just fine.
Tip # 5. Study the failure rate of your external drive
Each manufacturer claims their HDD is the most reliable but the fact is, some hard drives fail more often than others. AFR (annual failure rate) is a scientific method to prove that. According to Google, annual failure rate is 8% for drives after 2 years in service. In other words, one out of 12 drives will fail. Here is a chart by Backblaze that should give you an idea which team wins in the reliability tournament. As you can see, even for one manufacturer the failure rate varies from model to model.
Tip # 6. Choose your preferable speed
It’s not as if it’s Formula One case, but HDD spindle speed issue is pretty vital. There 4 standard options: 5400, 7200, 10000, 15000 rpm. If you make music or videos on your Mac, you might go for the best speed available on the market which is 10.000 — to 15.000 rpm. Though, the faster an external drive for Mac is, the less capacity it offers.
Tip # 7. Buy an HDD that sports USB 3.0 (or better)
Your external Mac hard drive will have many connection options. Anything lower than USB 3.0 is already outdated nowadays, so it should be your minimal starting point. Thunderbolt 3 or USB Type-C is the fastest port on Mac. It’s advertised as being able to copy 14 hours of HD video in less than a minute. So make sure your portable hard-drive for Mac is Thunderbolt-3 compatible.
Tip # 8. Consider portability
Depending on their physical size there are several external drive options. We assume you are not a company and don’t need the large enterprise-class drive (used for running servers). This means you’ll likely be choosing between standard desktop-class drive (with spinning platters) and slimmer SSD options, more resembling USB drives.
Standard desktop drives offer capacities of around 8 TB which should be perfect to store your movies and photos collection. These desktop-class external hard drives for Mac rely on wall power supply and they lack portability. Portable hard drives for Mac, on the other hand, are powered by your computer and can be surprisingly tiny nowadays. Here’s the golden formula to keep in mind: considering capacity, size and cheap price, be prepared that you can’t have all 3 at the same time. Want your drive to be very small and very capacious? Then, there’s no way it can be cheap. And likewise, if you aim at a cheap and capacious drive, it can’t possibly be small in size — you get the idea.
Standard desktop drives offer capacities of around 8 TB which should be perfect to store your movies and photos collection. These desktop-class external hard drives for Mac rely on wall power supply and they lack portability. Portable hard drives for Mac, on the other hand, are powered by your computer and can be surprisingly tiny nowadays. Here’s the golden formula to keep in mind: considering capacity, size and cheap price, be prepared that you can’t have all 3 at the same time. Want your drive to be very small and very capacious? Then, there’s no way it can be cheap. And likewise, if you aim at a cheap and capacious drive, it can’t possibly be small in size — you get the idea.
Extra tips before buying external drive for MacBook Pro
Best External Hard Drive For Macbook Air
- Locate large hidden files on your Mac with CleanMyMac X. You can download the free version of the app here.
- After purchase, don’t convert your Mac external HDD to APFS — it’s not supported yet
- Buy a drive that has larger cache (or buffer) size, 32 MB is a golden middle
- Never trust all your data to a single backup volume, it too may fail
What Size External Hard Drive For Macbook Pro 15
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