Backing up an old laptop for transfer to a new one in the remote outback

Migration Assistant can pull data

• From a Time Machine backup
• From a bootable clone backup made with Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! (i.e., a "Startup disk")

Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, and SuperDuper! are the main Mac backup programs. Time Machine comes with macOS; the others are third-party applications..

Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support

If your old laptop did not have USB-C ports, you might need an Apple USB-C to USB Adapter or equivalent. There are many other ways of making the connection, but it can be useful to have one of those on hand.

You have two options:

Time Machine - if you have an external hard drive, this is a good option. See Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support for more information.

Migration Assistant - this uses a peer connection between both Macs. See Transfer to a new Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support for more information.

c) Does this mean every time I want to back the laptop up, I need to find the external drive, plug it in etc or can it be done to the 'cloud' like my phone seems to do?

If you choose the Time Machine option, yes. The Mac does not back up to iCloud like an iPhone does - some content is synced through iCloud but it’s not a total system backup on the Mac.

e) And if I do get rid of it (old phone I have the same question) - how do I ensure none if my details are on it and it is totally wiped/no cyber-risk of stolen identity or anything?

See What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support.

Also, as an aside, since you mentioned some of the content on your Mac is for business purposes, if you have your own business, I’d recommend you check out Apple’s free business services at https://apple.com/business. There is a Get in Touch button on that page.

lalaliveshere wrote:

a) I can do that... right? Back up old laptop so it can all be put on new one straight away?

Yes.

b) Can I only back up to an external drive like a portable hard drive?

Migration Assistant only works with backups on external drives.

As far as backups in general, most people make backups on external drives. There are also some cloud backup services such as BackBlaze . (I've heard of it, but never used it.). Backing up large amounts of data to the cloud and restoring large amounts of data from the cloud can be slow. So some cloud services will let you mail them a backup on an external drive for initial setup, or will mail you a hard drive if you need to restore everything.

iCloud is not intended as a general backup service for Macs. Using iCloud Photos, or storing files in iCloud Drive, may provide some protection against losing data if something happens to your Mac. It won't protect you against making changes to a file, or deleting a file, and then regretting it, as any changes get synchronized to iCloud, and then to your other devices. Also, there are often many files that are not stored in iCloud at all.

c) Does this mean every time I want to back the laptop up, I need to find the external drive, plug it in etc or can it be done to the 'cloud' like my phone seems to do?

You need to find the external drive and plug it in.

Good backup software will save incremental changes, so updating a backup drive will usually take a lot less time than initializing it with a full backup in the first place.