# Do I Need to Backup Email and/or Apps?



## elmomax (Nov 16, 2008)

Finally ordered/received external hard drive and preparing to back up my Mac. I will back up iTunes music (that I ripped from CD's to my Mac), photos, and documents. 
- Is there any reason to also back up my Yahoo Email (yes, I am still a yahoo mail user - ugh)? 
- Also, what types of apps should I back up - is there need to back up apps that came preloaded on my Mac? I do not have any purchased apps except.....
- Also subscribe to MSFT suite - is there need to back up those apps?

Thanks for your help!


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

Yahoo mail is web based Email. All of your Email is on Yahoo's servers. You can access Yahoo Mail from any device to get your Email. So, there is no reason to backup Yahoo Mail. 
To make backup easier, use *Time Machine*, it should be an icon in your Dock or in System Preferences It will do everything for you, you can also setup a backup schedule. Of course doing what you are doing,a manual backup is a good practice too


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## elmomax (Nov 16, 2008)

When I called AppleCare they said Time Machine would back up everything on my hard drive. When I asked about "mail" which is essentially a duplicate of my Yahoo Mail, she said that would be backed up. That made no sense to me. 

1. In Time Machine can I exclude back up of "mail"? 

Also asked AppleCare about apps - they said Time machine would back them up - do not have content/file in many apps (numbers, etc.) 

2. Is Time Machine backing up the App or files in the app?
Could not get a clear answer from AppleCare.

Do not want to back up stuff that really will just take up space and is not necessary to back up.

Thank You!
E


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

If you do not use the Mail app in the Dock, then your Email is not configured for that app, and there will be no files in it. All other apps (ie) iTunes, Microsoft Word, Pictures etc are saved under your Users your User Name which is backed up. If you don't use an app, there will be no files to backup from it. 
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...specific-folders-to-back-up-with-time-machine


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## elmomax (Nov 16, 2008)

Thank you! More questions.
We migrated 30K photos from my boyfriend's external hard drive to my Mac. His PC is on its last leg and wanted to provide him with secondary backup for the photos. My hard drive is being crushed with all of these photos. 

I bought a WD My Passport and want to copy his photos that are now in my photo library to the external drive. I will be deleting many of the photos from my hard drive or will be out of room soon. He has additional SD cards and we will load them on to my Mac and want to know how I can subsequently add these new photos to the external drive - essentially want to save all of his photos I now have and those he will load on my mac to this external drive - not sure if Time Machine is the best solution - suggestions? May get a second external drive for these photos as back up- i cloud will get expensive with his ever expanding photo library. 

I will get a third WD external drive and use that for full backup of everything on my hard drive.

Does this solution make sense or is there a better way?

Once I clean out the


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

On your Mac, go to the Blue Apple icon in the upper right and choose *About This Mac*. Go to the Storage Tab. Look at the full capacity of your HDD. This will tell you what size drive you will need. 
You can get a Large External USB HDD up to 8TB's (1TB=1,000GB) It doesn't have to be WD, but they are a good brand. You can attach this external to your Mac, and drag all of the photos to a separate folder on this drive and delete them from your Mac to save space. in the Future Instead of saving the photos to your Mac, save them directly to the external drive from SD cards or connecting the camera or phone directly to the Mac and saving to the External HDD, Then create a second folder to save your Time Machine Backups, or you could get two drives one for photo backups and another for Time Machine. 
However, you don't want to keep all of your eggs in one basket, you are going to need another drive of the same size or larger, or cloud service to keep as backup to the backup once you delete them from the Mac. The idea is to have your files in at least two of the following separate places for each backup (ie) on the Mac, iCloud, DVD, or USB HDD


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