If your Mac crashes and you lose it all,
You can restore it back to its current state thanks to backups.
You may have already heard my diatribe about backing up your devices in order to safeguard your most precious data. If you're already using iCloud to sync your content, do you really need to do a full backup? Yes. One of the biggest reasons a full backup is so important is to cover you if or when your device crashes and you lose everything.
How to restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup
If you use Time Machine to back up your Mac, you can restore individual files, or restore your entire hard drive from a recent backup.
- Restart your Mac.
- While the startup disc is waking up, hold down the Command and R keys simultaneously. You're Mac will boot into macOS Utilities. If it doesn't, try again.
- Select Restore from Time Machine Backup from the list of available options.
- Click Continue.
- Click Continue on the Restore Your System Page.
- Select your Time Machine Backup.
- Click Continue.
- Select the most recent backup of your Mac's hard drive.
- Click Continue.
Your mac will restore the Time Machine backup and then restart once it is finished.
How to restore your Mac from a local backup
If you clone your Mac using a cloning program like Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner, you can restore your entire hard drive from a backup, and even create a bootable installer.
- Restart your Mac.
- While the startup disc is waking up, hold down the Command and R keyssimultaneously. You're Mac will boot into macOS Utilities. If it doesn't, try again.
- Click on Disk Utility.
- Click Continue.
- Select your Mac's hard drive.
- Click the Restore tab at the top of the Disk Utility window.
- Select the external hard drive that your cloned backup is stored next to "Restore From."
- Select your Mac's hard drive next to "Restore to."
- Click Restore.
Your Mac will restore the cloned backup and then restart once it is finished.