*Cross-posted on Fat Gold Watch and my Tumblr.*

Preface: I say this guide is “(More) Accessible” because I know it’s far from the height of accessibility; for example, I’m sure people would benefit from a YouTube video that visually walked you through the process of backing up your hard drive, but that’s not what I’m offering here. Also, this guide is devoid of explanations for why you perform certain steps—I’m sure those would be helpful, too, but I can’t provide info I don’t know myself!

Two observations:

  • It’s cruelly ironic that two of the most popular ‘everyday’ guides to making various topics more accessible to people have to use ableist slurs in their names. (If this article were one of those, it would be called [Ableist Slur]’s Guide to Backing Up Your Hard Drive or Backing Up Your Hard Drive for [Ableist Slur]s.)
  • All ‘tech people’ know how important it is to back up your hard drive, and also know that although many ‘less technologically proficient people’ know it’s important, too, they don’t do it because they don’t really know how to. However, my extensive research yielded very few accessibly written guides to backing up your hard drive—most assumed quite a bit of technological fluency.

What is this guide? 

A ‘barebones,’ step-by-step walkthrough for one of the most basic ways to back up your hard drive if you are using some kind of Mac computer.

What does ‘backing up your hard drive’ mean?

As far as I can explain it, it means taking the entirety of what’s on your computer—not just the files and applications, but the entire ‘operating system’ that allows those files to be stored and those applications to run—and putting it on an external hard drive. (A small device that can store a lot.)

Why should you back up your hard drive?

If your computer crashes, having an up-to-date back-up will allow your computer to be restored to where it was before it crashed. It will also allow you to recover files you have misplaced or deleted.

Let’s go!

Preliminary steps:

  1. Click the ‘apple’ icon in the top-left corner of your screen.
  2. Click “About This Mac.”
  3. Towards the bottom of the box that pops up, click “More Info…”
  4. The largest section of the new box that appears should be titled “Hardware Overview.” Three lines beneath that is “Processor Name.” To the right of that, read whether your computer uses an Intel or PowerPC processor. Keep note of this for later! Continue reading →