Can I backup my MacBook to Dropbox ( I have the purchased version with plenty of room to do so). If so, how do I go about doing it? I have a notification all the time "no Backups for 727 days"(since purchase. I don't want to buy a $280 divide (when I asked work IT) for a device to do so. onto of that t only has C ports, no cd or USB ports.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.15
"On the cloud" is great for sharing photos, but is not a viable backup solution for everything you have. The stuff is not under your control, and is subject to sloppy handling, arbitrary changes in policy, theft, data loss [are they making frequent backups using best practices?], and bankruptcy of the company that holds it. It can easily take three days to restore it at ordinary Internet speeds.
If you do not have a recent local, disk-based backup, your computer is like a ticking Time bomb. You are only one disk failure, one crazy software, or one "oops" away from losing EVERYTHING! Drives do not last forever. It is not a question of IF it will fail, only WHEN it will fail. In addition, you never know when crazy software or Pilot error throws away far more than you intended.
If you are using another direct-to-disk backup method that you prefer, and you currently have a recent disk-based backup, that is great. If not, you should consider using Built-in Time Machine. Take steps to acquire an external drive as soon as possible. If you buy one, a drive 2 to 3 times or larger than your boot drive is preferable for long term trouble-free operation. Do not pay extra for a drive that is fast. (You can get by for a while with a "found" smaller drive if necessary, but it will eventually become annoying).
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.
Time Machine may spend all afternoon making your first full backup. 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
"On the cloud" is great for sharing photos, but is not a viable backup solution for everything you have. The stuff is not under your control, and is subject to sloppy handling, arbitrary changes in policy, theft, data loss [are they making frequent backups using best practices?], and bankruptcy of the company that holds it. It can easily take three days to restore it at ordinary Internet speeds.
If you do not have a recent local, disk-based backup, your computer is like a ticking Time bomb. You are only one disk failure, one crazy software, or one "oops" away from losing EVERYTHING! Drives do not last forever. It is not a question of IF it will fail, only WHEN it will fail. In addition, you never know when crazy software or Pilot error throws away far more than you intended.
If you are using another direct-to-disk backup method that you prefer, and you currently have a recent disk-based backup, that is great. If not, you should consider using Built-in Time Machine. Take steps to acquire an external drive as soon as possible. If you buy one, a drive 2 to 3 times or larger than your boot drive is preferable for long term trouble-free operation. Do not pay extra for a drive that is fast. (You can get by for a while with a "found" smaller drive if necessary, but it will eventually become annoying).
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.
Time Machine may spend all afternoon making your first full backup. 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
Never for full backups. They would take a very long time to any online data storage service, and you have no control over how the the data is handled at the other end..
Time Machine (the process likely giving you those "727 day" messages) is intended to write to a local backup drive. If you need offsite backups, rotate two drives and take one home every night.
I don't want to buy a $280 divide...
I take that was supposed to be "drive?" If so...
A mech external is fine for Time Machine. An SSD is overkill x 10. Once the drive makes the first backup, subsequent incremental backups to a mech external are quick and unobtrusive.
I use Dropbox only for files to which I need access from multiple devices while they are in-progress, as when traveling with my Macbook Pro. Once done with a project I remove its files form Dropbox
For a desktop computer or a notebook used as a desktop, I use 3.5-inch enclosure with independent power supplies and with quality SATA 6G 7200rpm mech drives inside. That is max reliability. The cheap bus-powered 2.5-inch drive that go on sale every weekend are designed to...well... go on sale every weekend, not give long reliable service.
I use this bare self-powered enclosure:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-mercury-elite-pro
into which I install WD Black Series SATA 6G 7200rpm drives (that takes maybe five minutes). As for drive capacity, 2x the storage in my iMac does great for me. My internal SSD is 1TB and I have a 2TB Time Machine drive attached. Backups currently on the drive go to April 2019 when I bought the drive, and it still has 480GB available. Four years is more than I've ever needed.
I've never used it and don't know how it compares to other backup options so recommend you investigate it carefully, but Dropbox does offer the following: https://www.dropbox.com/features/cloud-storage/computer-backup
Can I backup my MacBook Pro to Dropbox?
