3 Ways to Restore Your Mac from an External Hard Drive

It’s quite essential to learn how to restore a Mac from an external hard drive.

When your Mac encounters a critical issue, you need to restore it from a bootable clone for troubleshooting. This guide shares three effective methods to repair your Mac. Whether you are dealing with a failing hard drive, a corrupted system, or simply upgrading to a new Mac, select the desired way to restore your Mac with ease.

Restore Mac From External Hard Drive

Part 1. Restore Mac from an External Hard Drive Using Time Machine

Before you restore your Mac, you should ensure you have a recent backup that contains all the important files. You can use Time Machine or a similar backup tool to back up your Mac data. To restore a Mac, you must have a drive that carries a bootable backup of your Mac. If you have backed up your Mac using the built-in Time Machine, follow the steps below to start the Mac restoration.

Step 1.
Plug the external hard drive that contains the Time Machine backup into your Mac. Shut down your Mac and then reboot it into Recovery Mode. Choose Restore from Time Machine and then click Continue. Choose the external drive you just connected.
Restore Mac From Time Machine Backup
Step 2.
You will see a list of available backups. You’d better pick the most recent backup and click Continue. Choose the internal hard drive as the destination for the restore. Ensure you select the correct drive because all existing data on the chosen disk will be erased. Click Continue to restore your Mac from the external hard drive. A progress bar will appear, showing the estimated time remaining.
Step 3.
Your Mac will reboot once the restore is complete. You need to set up this Mac as a brand-new device. Your personal data, applications, and related settings will be restored from the selected backup.

Part 2. Restore Mac from External Hard Drive Using Migration Assistant

If you are setting up a new Mac device and want to transfer everything from your old Mac’s backup, you can turn to the built-in macOS utility Migration Assistant. It allows you to restore data from a Time Machine backup stored on the external drive.

Step 1.
Connect the external drive to your Mac. You can go to System Preferences and enter Time Machine to check the status of the backup. After that, go to Applications on your Mac, click and expand Utilities, and then open Migration Assistant.
Open Migration Assistant On Mac
Step 2.
Click the Continue button to move on. You may need to enter your administrator password to proceed. Tick the From a Mac, Time Machine backup, or Startup disk option and click Continue.
Open Migration Assistant And Select Transfer Source
Step 3.
Ensure the external hard drive is connected properly. Migration Assistant will detect your Time Machine backup or external drive. Pick the specific backup you want to restore from and click Continue.
Migration Assistant Select Backup
Step 4.
Migration Assistant will list various data categories you can transfer, including applications, user accounts and related files, other files and folders, and system settings. Check the boxes for the data you want to restore. Click Continue to start the migration process.
Testore Mac From Backup Migration Assistant

Part 3. How to Restore Data from an External Hard Drive on a Mac

If you want to restore your Mac from an external hard drive to recover some important files, specially designed data recovery software can be the better choice. You can try using the reliable Aiseesoft Data Recovery to restore lost or deleted files from an external hard drive on your Mac. Aiseesoft provides a straightforward way to restore Mac data from different storage devices, including internal and external hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, and more.

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Step 1.
Open the Data Recovery software on your Mac and choose the specific file types you want to restore. Connect your external hard drive and then select it under Removable Drives. Click Scan to search for all files on the drive.
Scan Mac
Step 2.
Once the scan is finished, you will see various recoverable files organized by file type or path. Use the Preview feature to check these files. Choose all the files you need to recover and then click the Recover button. The recovery software uses advanced algorithms to find and restore your Mac data efficiently.
Choose Usb Data

Part 4. FAQs on How to Restore Mac from External Hard Drive

Question 1. Can I restore my Mac from an external hard drive without a Time Machine?

Yes, you can restore your Mac from an external hard drive without using Time Machine. If you have created a bootable backup of your Mac using software like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, you can restore your Mac from the external drive. If you manually copied various valuable files to an external drive, you can choose to reinstall macOS, factory reset your Mac, and then transfer files back to the Mac.

Question 2. How do you boot a Mac into recovery mode?

You can boot your Mac into Recovery Mode to reinstall macOS, repair disks, fix system-related issues, restore from a backup, and more. If you are using an old Intel-based Mac, you can shut it down, press the Power button, and then immediately press Command + R on your keyboard. When you see the Apple logo or a utility window, release the keys. To boot a Mac with Apple Silicon like M1, M2, or M3, power it off first, and then keep pressing the Power button until you see Loading startup options. Click Options and then Continue to access Recovery Mode tools.

Question 3. Will reinstalling macOS erase everything on a Mac?

Reinstalling macOS does not erase everything on your Mac. After you boot your Mac into Recovery Mode, you can choose the Reinstall macOS option from the utility window. This operation will reinstall macOS over the existing operating system. Your personal files, apps, and various settings will be preserved. If you want to start fresh, sell the Mac, or resolve persistent system issues, you can erase your disk and remove all data from your Mac.

Conclusion

You can learn three methods to restore a Mac from an external hard driverestore a Mac from an external hard drive. You should create backups regularly to ensure you’ll never have to worry about losing your important files or settings.

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