Home > Questions

How to Transfer All Data of a Mac to an External Hard Drive?

I must say goodbye to my 2010 iMac. How can I remove my documents and preserve them? Some are very old but precious. I want to banish and destroy any personal/financial information, and photos in iCloud. What's the process for saving? What is important and making sure the rest is gone for good?

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Sherry Song

Sherry Song

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Hello, there are many solutions you can try:

(1) The Fastest way to transfer files to an external hard drive to a Mac is with iBoysoft MagicMenu. It's a Finder context menu tool that can enable you to copy or move files to any place on your Mac.

(2) Drag and drop holding the Command Key.

(3) Use keyboard shortcuts Command+C and Command+V keys.

(4) Use Terminal to run the mv command.

(5) Use Finder to drag and drop directly. 

(6) Use Time Machine backup.

If you can't move the files to the external drive, maybe the file system is NTFS, which can't be written on Mac. So you can choose to utilize iBoysoft NTFS for Mac. It allows you to move the files easily on Mac.

Also read: How to Move/Transfer Files from Mac to External Hard Drive?

People Also Ask

Read More Questions

Read More Advice From iBoysoft's Computer Experts

arreglar AirDrop que no funciona

AirDrop No Funciona en MacBook, iPhone o iPad, ¿Cómo Solucionarlo?

Soluciona AirDrop que no funciona en Mac/MacBook, iPhone o iPad en todas las posibles soluciones. También, infórmate de las razones por las cuales AirDrop no funciona en tu MacBook.

How to quickly get file path on Mac

How to Copy a File/Directory in macOS Terminal? (cp command)

This article explains how to copy a file or directory in macOS Terminal using the cp command, with detailed examples.

News Tips

no se pueden almacenar archivos en la copia de seguridad de Time Machine

Solucionado: No se pueden almacenar archivos en el disco de respaldo de Time Machine 2024

Si no puedes almacenar archivos en tu disco de respaldo de Time Machine, sigue los métodos en esta publicación. Luego, podrás copiar otros archivos al disco de Time Machine.