External drives · Upgrading, transferring and backing up the drive

My fast drive seems to be failing — what should I do?

Short answer: Copy it off quickly: connect a healthy drive and use More → Drive → Transfer Drive… to move everything and switch over. Try a different cable and port first, since random disconnects are often the cable, and check the drive with Disk Utility's First Aid.

Copy everything off it as soon as possible, while it still works.

  1. Connect a healthy external drive with enough space.
  2. Use Transfer Drive… (More → Drive) to copy everything to it, verify it and switch over — your moved apps and folders then work from the new drive.
  3. If the transfer can't complete, use Backup Drive… or copy the most important folders yourself in Finder.

You can also run First Aid on the drive in Disk Utility to check it. Frequent random disconnects are often a cable or port problem, so try another cable and plug directly into the Mac first.

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