
Choose the one that's right for you and within your budget. Youll find it in the Apple menu, which is at the top-left corner of the screen. There are various choices for restoring your Mac from an external backup in macOS Big Sur and macOS Ventura. Backing Up to iCloud 1 Open your System Preferences. It is very time-consuming and less efficient than restoring directly from an external hard drive you have sitting right on your desk. You can then select the files and folders you want to restore from your backup menu.īecause you either have to download files from the Internet or send them away for a physical copy, I only recommend using a cloud-based backup service to restore your Mac if you don't already have a local backup on hand.

You can launch the remote app on your Mac or visit the company's website. Most programs will have a Restore files tool right in the user interface. All of them will require that you download a backup from their remote servers, though - unless the service offers to send you a physical hard drive that you can use as a backup (Backblaze provides this feature). If you use a cloud-based backup service, like Backblaze or CrashPlan, you can download missing data to restore your Mac.Įach cloud-based backup service is different. You can move files from iCloud Drive to your Mac as you need them, or select all of your files and drag them to the place you want to keep them.How to back up your Mac to an online backup service (Image credit: Joseph Keller / iMore) Note that if you disable syncing, Desktop files will no longer appear on the desktop of any other Macs you own, but they'll remain available in a folder on your iCloud Drive, and a new Desktop and Documents folder is created on your Mac in the home folder. If you decide you don't like Desktop and Documents folder syncing in iCloud, you can easily stop syncing by following the above steps and unchecking the box next to Desktop & Documents Folder (step 5).


