I want to upgrade my Mac to at least OS 10.9. It's running 10.6.8 now and has an Intel Core i5 processor. I've been making backups to an external drive via Time Machine, and I read that one step before upgrading is making sure my backups are good. One way to check is to boot up my laptop from the backup drive. But I was recently told that my current OS doesn't support booting up from my external drive, which I confirmed (the drive doesn't show on the screen while I have Option pressed during startup). What are my options for making sure the backups are good?
How to boot up the laptop from an external backup drive, or how to verify that a backup is good
backuphard driveupgrade
Related Question
- MacOS – OS X upgrade on MacBook Pro mid 2010 trilemma
- MacOS – the latest operating system that the 2006 MacBook Pro will support
- MacOS – Lion to El Capitan upgrade stuck on restart
- iMac Startup – Booting Up From Internal Drive vs External Drive
- Mid 2011 iMac 27″ Upgrade – Will This CPU Work?
- MacOS – External drive Mojave installs unaccessible from Mavericks
- How to Downgrade from MacOS Catalina to Mojave- Creating a bootable hard drive in APFS format
Best Answer
Head over to System Preferences < Time Machine and then select the "Show Time Machine in menu bar checkbox". From the menu bar, select time machine and select "Enter Time Machine". Now make sure your latest backup is visible there and you can see your files, this will ensure you have performed your backup correctly. To be safe, navigate to the disc and make sure you can see all files there.