How do I set up an external drive for Time Machine?
MacBook Pro
macOS Mojave 10.14.1
Seagate External Drive 5 TB
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James Neal
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How Do I Set Up an External Drive for Time Machine?
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First, make sure you aren't using that drive for anything else and it doesn't have any partitions on it or anything. If it is a new drive, then you are set. But if you are using an old drive and have been doing other things with it, you will want to make sure you have everything off that drive and maybe use Dick Utility to erase and reformat.
Then just go to System Preferences, Time Machine. You'll see a Select Disk or similar button there. That's all you need. Time Machine is pretty easy to set up and get going. If you have a lot of data, let it back up overnight to get started. Then since you are using a laptop, remember to plug it into the drive whenever it is on your desk. Time Machine works best when you let it do its regular hourly backups, but with a laptop this can be tough if you are moving around a lot.