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Failing HardDrive - Advice on best method to back up items ... read on

my macbook pro hardrive mid 2012 may be failing. of course the external hard drive i used as back up failed the First Aid disk utility.


Goal: Save all photos and a few documents from macbook pro into new external hard drive. i want to wipe and erase macbook to start all over.

not knowing a thing about it i have all of my files saved under icloud drive .


Question: What’s the best method of saving my photos to a new hard drive? Are the photos and movies that appear in my iphoto/ photos and imovie apps appear in a specific place and i can copy and paste?


Im a bit confused about icloud drive - in that if i erase my macbook disks, will it delete all of my files on drive?




MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jun 3, 2020 8:51 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 3, 2020 10:43 AM

To learn how to use Time Machine please read Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac.


Im a bit confused about icloud drive - in that if i erase my macbook disks, will it delete all of my files on drive?


No. You can completely erase a Mac and files on iCloud Drive will not be affected. iCloud Drive is explained here: Set up iCloud Drive - Apple Support. Don't erase files on iCloud Drive unless you really want to erase them.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 3, 2020 10:43 AM in response to misanthropicsu_

To learn how to use Time Machine please read Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac.


Im a bit confused about icloud drive - in that if i erase my macbook disks, will it delete all of my files on drive?


No. You can completely erase a Mac and files on iCloud Drive will not be affected. iCloud Drive is explained here: Set up iCloud Drive - Apple Support. Don't erase files on iCloud Drive unless you really want to erase them.

Failing HardDrive - Advice on best method to back up items ... read on

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