Want to back your Mac up to iCloud, Dropbox, or another remote backup solution? We look at the various kinds of backup you can have, explaining how to backup your Mac - and why you should use more. Oct 18, 2019 The first backup may take a long time, depending on how many files you have, but you can continue using your Mac while a backup is underway. Time Machine backs up only the files that changed since the previous backup, so future backups will be faster. To start a backup manually, choose Back Up Now from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. Mar 22, 2015 I have an iPhone 6 with iOS 8.2 on. I have enabled iCloud photo library (beta) and ticked 'optimise iPhone storage'. However on my iCloud backup storage options on my iPhone you can enable/disable what you want backed up. On my photo library it has 'no. Ever since Lion (OS X 10.7), Apple has hidden your personal Library folder (/Library) by default. In Lion and Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), you could make the folder visible, but it required some work. You should poke around in /Library and see what's in there that you need. Here's a list of what I backup to get you started: /Library/Application Support and /Library/Preferences are where most of your application settings live. You should go through each of those folders' subfolders and see which ones you need.
An iMovie library holds all the media and data used to make movies in iMovie. If your iMovie library is large and you want to free up storage space on your Mac, you can move your iMovie library to an external drive.
Before you move an iMovie library, it's a good idea to back up your Mac.
Moving your library to an external hard drive doesn’t affect any iMovie Theater content you have moved to iCloud.
You can store your library on an external storage device such as a USB Thunderbolt drive formatted as APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Apple doesn’t recommend storing iMovie libraries on external storage devices like SD cards and USB flash drives, or drives shared on a network.
You can’t store your library on an external drive or other disk used for Time Machine backups.
When your external drive is connected to your Mac, the library you moved to the external drive opens automatically in iMovie. If you disconnect the external drive containing the library, iMovie opens to a new, empty library created in the Movies folder on your Mac. iMovie automatically saves any projects you create and media you import in the new library.
If you want to open the library you moved to an external drive, you can open it after you reconnect the external drive. You can then move clips, events, and projects between libraries.
Your iTunes library, a database that's made up of all of the music and other media that you add to iTunes for Windows, is organized into two iTunes library files and an iTunes Media folder.
Before you back up your media:
iTunes and Store availability and features might vary by country or region. Learn what's available in your country or region.
In macOS Catalina, your previous iTunes media library is now available in the Apple Music app, Apple TV app, Apple Podcasts app, and Apple Books app. And when you back up your Mac, your media library is automatically included in that backup.
When you consolidate, copies of any files that were outside of your iTunes Media folder are added to your iTunes Media folder. To save space on your hard drive, you might want to delete the original files after you make sure that the copies are in your iTunes Media Folder.
By default, your iTunes Media folder is in your iTunes folder. To find it, go to User > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media.
If you don't see your iTunes Media folder in the above location, here's how to find it:
After you consolidate your media files, you can back up your library and media files to an external drive.
You can restore your iTunes library from your external drive to your computer. If you're restoring an iTunes Library from a different computer, make sure that your new computer has the latest version of iTunes.