How to back up MacBook Pro

Time Machine is integrated deeply into MacOS, and has been available since the very early versions of MacOSX, like 10.5 leopard from 2007. Time Machine continues to be the simplest way to back up all the Mac-formatted drives connected to your Mac. Time Machine is absolutely NOT being discontinued.

Attach your external drive and use:

Settings > General > 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. APFS format is default format if running MacOS 11 Big Sur or later.

--------

What is being deprecated, and will not be available in MacOS 27, is support for devices that can ONLY back up using Apple File [Server] Protocol, a very old protocol from the dawn of Apple Networking that is just too old.

The main fallout is that the Apple Time Capsule devices will no longer be usable for Network backups. In fact, users who ERASED their Time Capsule devices under MacOS 26 discovered that Time Machine refuses to create a NEW backup on that device.

Tom Johnson wrote:

Open Users Folder then Make a new folder called "Backup" then COPY your WHOLE Users folder into the new Backup folder. Change new ** file name to "Your Name_Month/Day/Year" so that you can then add periodic new Backup files. Make another ** to an external HD for added protection. (** = Backup)

That is an interesting idea, but copying one's data to the same drive is no backup. When the drive fails and the original data goes away, so does the "backup" data.

Making a drag-n-drop copy of one's User folder to an external drive is a viable alternative, but it does put the onus of keeping the backup current on the user.

Our friend, @Grant Bennet-Alder, has it nailed with their guidance re: Time Machine. 👍🏽

yeah, to external drives, but it seems the wifi time capsule will stop being supported soon

Open Users Folder then Make a new folder called "Backup" then COPY your WHOLE Users folder into the new Backup folder. Change new ** file name to "Your Name_Month/Day/Year" so that you can then add periodic new Backup files. Make another ** to an external HD for added protection. (** = Backup)