Most commonly used backup methods Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's. If your boot drive is not booting:.Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive. For a deeper understanding about the hidden partitions on a OS X boot drive: Erase, formatting, OS X installs on Mac's. A: is broken into three parts.

Advertisement Apple is known for having great customer service and repair technicians, but if you’re no longer under warranty that expertise doesn’t come cheap. You can easily pay several hundred dollars for anything more than a minor problem! Why not try troubleshooting your own Mac first next time? Here’s what you need to know. But First: Backup If things on your Mac aren’t quite running like they should and you’re about to embark on a journey of resolution, you should first ensure your data is safe before something goes wrong by backing up your Mac.

You should If your Mac's hard drive is small and your Time Machine hard drive is big, it might be worth using the drive for both backup and storage purposes., (or Use your NAS, or any network share, for backing up your Mac with Time Machine.) and wait for it to finish. How is office 2016 for the mac different from office 365 pro plus. Good, now you can start fiddling with things. Run Your Updates and a Virus Scan Before anything else, make sure that everything on your computer is up to date.

Your operating system, your apps, any firmware on your peripherals.. Absolutely everything. Go to Apple menu > App Store and check the updates section to see if any of your apps are waiting to update. If you have other apps that you didn’t download via the App Store, you’ll have to check them by opening them individually or using an app like AppFresh to find out which ones need to be updated.

These Tired of manually installing and updating Mac apps? Check out these alternatives to the Mac App Store, offering downloads and updates the App Store can't. Make it a lot easier.

You should also run a virus scan to make sure that you don’t have any viruses or nasty adware causing problems (you can also use a program like to look specifically for adware, just Apparently your computer is riddled with problems, junk files and wide-open to attacks that only MacKeeper can protect you against — but we know that's not the case.). A lot of people still think that Macs don’t get viruses, but Is your Mac acting kind of.

Whether you're seeing adverts you can't explain, or your system is unreasonably slow, you might think the problem is malware. But you're probably wrong., and adware is quite common. After you’ve run your updates and some scans, restart your computer and see if the problem is still there. Diagnose the Problem If you’re still seeing the problem, you’ll need to figure out what’s causing it. The first thing to do is figure out if you’re having a hardware- or software-related issue. To check your hardware, fire up Apple Diagnostics (or Apple Hardware Test, depending on the age of your Mac) using the following instructions. • Shut down your Mac and disconnect all peripherals (except a power adapter, mouse, keyboard, and Ethernet connector).

• Press the power button. • Hold the D key until Apple Diagnostics starts.

• Select a language and press enter. • If you’re using a pre-2013 Mac, check “Perform extended testing” and click the Test button. Once you’ve done these things, the diagnostic program will start running. It could take a while to finish, but be patient. Once it’s done running, you’ll get a report with some basic information about what the program found.

Make notes of these things, then restart your computer. Using OS X’s Disk Utility, a While you're not forced to become familiar with them, there are a handful of useful utilities included with Mac OS X., can also help diagnose the problem, especially if it’s something simple like a permissions issue. If nothing comes up when you run the diagnostic tool, you’ll have to try using another method. Apple’s “” support document provides a lot of great advice on figuring out what triggers the problem. If you know what the problem is, have an idea of when it happens, and can remember when it starts, you’ll likely be able to use documentation or a forum online to figure out how to fix it.

When you know what the problem is, you can take steps to fix it. If you’re still not sure, start working through the steps below. Troubleshoot Software Fixing software is relatively easy, so we’ll start there. Repair permissions Permissions issues can often cause problems that are difficult to explain, and fixing those permissions is one of the most common ways to solve weird problems on your computer. Just open up Disk Utility (from Applications > Utilities) and click Verify Disk Permissions. You’ll almost certainly see a number of permissions that need fixing. Once the verification stops running, click the Repair Disk Permissions button.

If there are a lot of permissions that need to be repaired, this could take a while, so grab a cup of coffee. Reset the PRAM and SMC The parameter random-access memory (PRAM) and system management controller (SMC) are in charge of a lot of important things on your computer (for a list of things, check out this article on Having trouble with your Mac? Here's how to reset the SMC and PRAM or NVRAM to get it working properly again.).