How to back up a macbook pro (high sierra) from recovery mode on to an external drive via Disk Utility

ptingsuk wrote:

My MacBook Pro 2011 is running on High Sierra. The MacBook no longer wants to continue to load and is stuck on the loading page after signing in the password. I found many options to use command-r to try to recover data. So my question is how do I make a copy of my Hard Drive onto an portable external drive using Disk Utility?

Restore in Disk Utility can do that. You would need to format (Erase) your external drive if it isn't Mac compatible. Select your external drive volume (click on it on the left). Then you would use Restore with your startup drive as the source (restore from), and your external drive should be the destination if it was properly selected.

I wish they had chosen a better name for that function, but the Restore function is what you are looking for PROVIDED the drive can be Mounted.

If the drive is too damaged to Mount, you will need a fully-functional MacOS on an external drive, and additional utility software such as Data Rescue from Prosoft to make expeditions onto the damaged drive looking for files.