I am getting ready to back up my computer as my new computer is arriving today. I was going to back up everything with an external hard drive, but really the only thing I need is my photos. What is the best way to do this?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.13
since you have not done this a lot, the really painless way is to use Time Machine. you just provide a disk at least as large as the stuff you want to back up, [ideal size is 2.5 times or larger] and tell Time machine to use it.
Attach your external drive and use
System preferences > Time machine ...
... to turn on Time Machine and specify what drive to store your Backups on. It may ask to initialize the new drive, and that is as expected.
regardless of the method you choose, you backup program may spend all afternoon making your first full backup. if you use Time machine, you can continue to do your regular work while it does this. The first Full Backup is by far the biggest backup. After that, it will work quietly and automatically in the background, without interrupting your regular work, and only save the incremental changes.
Time Machine's "claim to fame" is that it is the backup that gets done, because it does not ruin performance of the rest of the computer while doing its backup operations. You do not have to set aside a "Special Time" when you only do backups. When you need it, your Time machine Backup is much more likely to be there.
How to use Time Machine to Backup or Restore your Mac:
Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
since you have not done this a lot, the really painless way is to use Time Machine. you just provide a disk at least as large as the stuff you want to back up, [ideal size is 2.5 times or larger] and tell Time machine to use it.
Attach your external drive and use
System preferences > Time machine ...
... to turn on Time Machine and specify what drive to store your Backups on. It may ask to initialize the new drive, and that is as expected.
regardless of the method you choose, you backup program may spend all afternoon making your first full backup. if you use Time machine, you can continue to do your regular work while it does this. The first Full Backup is by far the biggest backup. After that, it will work quietly and automatically in the background, without interrupting your regular work, and only save the incremental changes.
Time Machine's "claim to fame" is that it is the backup that gets done, because it does not ruin performance of the rest of the computer while doing its backup operations. You do not have to set aside a "Special Time" when you only do backups. When you need it, your Time machine Backup is much more likely to be there.
How to use Time Machine to Backup or Restore your Mac:
Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support
since all you want is your photos library, I would personally do it manually. you can just drag and drop the library (entirely or one at a time) onto the external drive and reverse the process to reload the library onto the new Mac.
backing up with external hard drive
