Alternatives for backing up your Mac
Your photos, music, documents, and software are important. The best way to protect them is to frequently back up all the files on your Mac. There are several easy ways to do this.
Time Machine
Time Machine backs up everything on your Mac, including your photos, music, movies, and documents. After you set up Time Machine, it regularly backs up your Mac without any more effort on your part. See Connect a new backup disk to your Mac.
iCloud Drive
iCloud Drive lets you store your documents in iCloud, and access them from all of your computers and iOS devices. If you like, you can have all the files in your Desktop and Documents folders stored automatically in iCloud Drive. See Use iCloud Drive to store documents on your Mac and iOS devices.
CDs and DVDs
You can create a burn folder that contains all your important files. Whenever you want to back up the latest versions of those files to a CD or DVD, simply open that burn folder, then click Burn. See Create and use a burn folder on Mac.
Other disks
If you have a second hard disk, you can back up files by copying them from one disk to the other. To save space, compress an item before copying it to a backup disk; just select it, then choose File > Compress.
If your hard disk is divided into partitions, you can back up files from one partition to another. This solution isn’t as safe as other options because your backup may be lost along with the original files if your hard disk is damaged. For information about partitioning a disk, see Partition a physical disk.
Disk Utility
If you need to back up more files than can fit on a single CD or DVD, you can use Disk Utility to create a compressed disk image of the files.