If you read my previous post about how to format an external hard drive, you know that I bought a 2TB Seagate Expansion external drive and managed to create two partitions on the disk — one for Mac backup purposes, and the other for personal use.

1. External Drives For Mac And Pc
2. External Storage For Macbook
3. External Drives For Mac And Pc
4. External Hdd For Mac And Pc
5. Best External Hard Drives For Mac
6. External Storage For Mac Mini
7. External Drives For Mac Best Buy
8. Best External Backup For Imac

For your Mac, LG brings an ultra-slim DVD external drive. With its 8X DVD-R writing speed, you can quickly transfer data from your DVD or CD to your MacBook or iMac. During the style evolution, LG’s optical drive has achieved a new status from slimmer to the slimmest. All you have to do is connect your external drive to your Mac, launch the app, click on the icon of the disk you want to format, navigate to the 'Erase' tab and click on the 'Erase' button while having 'Mac OS X Extended' selected as the volume format, as seen in the image below. Connect an external drive to your Mac via USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt. Open a new Finder window. Open your external drive in that window. Open a new Finder window. Don't close your previous window (open to your external drive), as you'll need it shortly.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to backup your Mac data to an external drive. You should backup your Mac on a regular basis, especially if you’re planning to perform macOS updates.

I did this several weeks ago while preparing my MacBook Pro for the High Sierra update. You may also be interested in taking a look at the issues I encountered during that process just in case you also want to upgrade your Mac to the latest macOS.

Please note that the backup tool that I used is Time Machine, a built-in app provided by Apple. If you want to backup your Mac data without using Time Machine, there are also alternatives worth considering.

Where is Time Machine on Mac?

As I said, Time Machine is a built-in app within macOS ever since OS X 10.5. To find it, click on the Apple logo on the top left corner of your screen, then select System Preferences.

In the Preferences Pane, you’ll see the app located between “Date & Time” and “Accessibility”.

What does Time Machine Backup?

Time Machine is definitely the easiest way to backup Mac. In addition, the app is created and recommended by Apple. Once you have a timely backup, it’s incredibly easy to restore all or part of your data in case of accidental deletion or a hard drive crash.

So, what kind of data does Time Machine backup? Everything! Photos, videos, documents, applications, system files, accounts, preferences, messages, you name it: They all can be backed up by Time Machine. You can then restore your data from a Time Machine snapshot. To do so, first open Finder, then Applications, and click on Time Machine to continue.

Be aware that the recovery process can be only be conducted when your Mac is bootable.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Backing up Mac to an External Hard Drive

Note: the screenshots below are taken based on macOS 10.12.5 Sierra. If your Mac has High Sierra or an older version, differences may exist, but the process should look similar to what’s displayed below.

Step 1: Connect your external hard drive.

First, use the USB cable (or USC-C cable if you’re on a newest Mac model with Thunderbolt 3 ports) that comes with your external drive to connect that drive to your Mac. Once the disk icon shows up on your desktop (if it doesn’t, open Finder > Preferences > General, and here make sure you’ve checked “External disks” to let them show on the desktop), move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Select the disk for backup.

Now open Time Machine (I tell you how above) and select the disk you want to use. I have partitioned my Seagate drive into two new volumes, “Backup” and “Personal Use”, as you see from the screenshot. I chose “Backup”.

Step 3: Confirm backup (optional).

External Drives For Mac And Pc

If you have used another disk for backup before, Time Machine will ask you whether you want to stop backing up to the previous disk and use the new one instead. It’s up to you. I selected “Replace”.

Step 4: Wait until the process is complete.

Now Time Machine will start to backup all your data. The progress bar gives you an estimate of how much time is left before the backup is complete. I found it a bit inaccurate: Initially, it said “About 5 hours remaining”, but it only took two hours to finish. It’s worth noting that the remaining time may vary from case to case depending on the write speed of your external hard drive.

It says I have to wait 5 hours

After about an hour and a half, it says only 15 minutes remaining

Step 5: Eject your external drive and unplug it.

When the backup procedure is completed, don’t rush to disconnect your device as this could cause potential disk problems. Instead, go back to the main desktop, locate the volume that your external hard drive represents, right-click and select Eject. Then, you can safely unplug the device and put it in a safe place.

One More Thing

Like any other hardware device, an external hard drive will fail sooner or later. It is advisable to make a copy of the data on your external drive — as they say, a “backup of your backups”! One good option is to use cloud storage services. I now use IDrive (read our full review here), and I really like it because the app is so easy to use, and it also allows me to back up my Facebook albums and photos automatically. Backblaze and Carbonite are also popular options in the market, though I have yet to give them a try.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of data backup these days, especially when my mid-2012 MacBook hard drive died all of a sudden. I’ve also seen cases where my friend’s computer and hard drive failed. You can imagine their desperation. Without a proper backup, it’s really hard to restore data. Although you could try a third-party recovery program like Prosoft Data Rescue and Stellar Mac Data Recovery, chances are they won’t get all your lost data back.

Anyway, the main takeaway I want you to have from this article is this: Backup your Mac with Time Machine and create a second or third copy of those backups if you can.

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Summary: This is a guide to fix external hard drive corrupted issue for you, and it talks about how to recover data from a corrupted external drive and iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery, the best corrupted external hard drive data recovery software.

Hello, I have a problem with my external hard drive. When I plug it into my Mac, it takes too long to acknowledge the drive and files can't be opened at all. I tried to reformat my external hard drive but it says reformat unsuccessful. Any suggestion on how to fix corrupted external hard drives on Mac?

External hard drives are usually used to back up a large amount of data or to extend the capacity of our computers. Most of the time, your Mac computer will recognize the external hard drive once you plug it into the USB port, and the external hard drive will be automatically mounted so that you can access data on this drive. Sometimes, however, things will not proceed smoothly without a hitch. Your external hard drives may just corrupt on your Mac computer, being unrecognizable or inaccessible. Once that happens, you will lose access to the files stored on the corrupted external hard drive. It's such an annoyance especially when you don't have a copy of data backup while data on this external hard drive is especially important to you.

Don't worry. Let's check out the crux of external hard drive corruption and learn how to fix or repair corrupted external hard drives on Mac in case of losing any significant data.

Why you external hard drives is corrupted?

There are various reasons leading to external hard drives corruption, including drives sharing among different platforms, faulty connection, unsafe ejection, interruption during transferring files, hardware malfunction and virus infection, etc. Don't know which is the troublemaker of your external hard drive corruption? Just check the following fixes one by one and you will work it out.

How to fix/repair corrupted external hard drives on Mac?

Solution 1: Check if your drive is properly plugged in

Even though it sounds foolish, it could troubleshoot your corrupted external hard drive. Simply plug your external hard drive slowly or quickly into the USB port and see if you can access this drive.

Solution 2: Check if it is a faulty connection

Since the external hard drive is connected through the USB cable and port, it could be corrupted due to a wobbly connection. You can just connect your external hard drive to another USB port or USB cable.

Solution 3: Fix/repair the corrupted external hard drive with Disk Utility

If the connection is not supposed to be blamed and you sure your external hard drive has no hardware problems, it could be a minor file system corruption which could be fixed through Disk Utility. Disk Utility is a built-in utility on Mac to verify and fix basic external hard drives errors, such as multiple apps quit unexpectedly on Mac computer, a file is corrupted, an external device is corrupted or doesn't work properly, or your computer won't start up, etc.

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1. Go to Utilities > Disk Utility.

2. Select the corrupted external hard drive from the sidebar.

3. Click First Aid on the top of Disk Utility window. It may take a while to fix the errors.

Solution 4: Fix/repair the corrupted external hard drive by reformatting

External Drives For Mac And Pc

If Disk Utility failed to fix the corrupted external hard drive for you, the file system of your external hard drive could be seriously corrupted and need to be reformatted with a new file system. In some ways, reformatting is able to fix your external drive corruption issue but from another perspective, reformatting will erase the disk and you will lose your important data. Fortunately, there is a tool called iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery that can recover your data firstly before you reformat this corrupted external hard drive. It's a risk-free way to fix the corrupted external hard drive and you don't have to worry about data loss any more.

iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery is free and reliable Mac data recovery software that can recover data from corrupted external hard drives and recover data from formatted/unreadable/unrecognizable external hard drives. Moreover, this useful tool can undelete files from Trash, recover lost/deleted APFS partition and recover lost data from hard drives, USB flash drive, memory cards, pen drives, etc. It is compatible with macOS 10.15/10.14/10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.

Follow the steps below to fix the corrupted external hard drive.

Step 1: Recover data from the corrupted external hard drive with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

1. Download and install iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery on your Mac computer.

2. Connect the corrupted external hard drive to your Mac and launch iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery.

3. Select the corrupted drive and click 'Next' to scan for all the lost files.

External Hdd For Mac And Pc

4. Double-click to preview the scanning results and choose files you want to get back.

5. Click 'Recover' and save them to another well-functioned drive.

6. Check the recovered files and make sure all the lost files have been restored successfully.

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Step 2: Fix the corrupted external hard drive by reformatting.

External Storage For Mac Mini

After successfully recovering data from the corrupted external hard drive, you can fix it by reformatting now.

1. Launch Disk Utility.

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2. Select the corrupted external hard drive from the sidebar of the window.

3. Click the Erase button on the top of Disk Utility window.

Best External Backup For Imac

4. Complete related information (name, format, scheme, etc.), and then click the Erase button.

Conclusion

To avoid losing data from corrupted external hard drive, you'd better do yourself a huge favor and make sure your backup strategy is up and running and foolproof. A little pain now will save you a world of hurt in the future. If you have already lost data because of external hard drive corruption, without wishing to pour salt in the wound, recover the lost data with iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery software for good.