I know this is more of a macbook general question, but I was particular curious about how other programmers tackle this. There’s also a 100k articles on it, all with affiliate links to XYZ thing, so it’d be great to get recommendations from real people. I got a new macbook and plan to give the older one to my sister.
I’d love to “just back the whole thing up and then factory reset”. I really don’t feel like doing a major house cleaning of the machine to decide what I want to keep or throw out.
When you guys do this, or backup in general, have you tried iCloud or Time machines? Do you use google drive? Is there something more specific for my use case than that?
If you are getting a new MBP you could transfer the MacBook Air apps, files and settings to the new machine. I’ve done that before, but now I generally prefer to just start clean with the new machine (takes more time to setup but gives me a opportunity to reduce app/setting cruft.
I’m afraid everyone’s situation is probably a bit unique. I don’t keep anything I care about on my notebook. I keep everything important in the cloud (gmail, google drive, lastpass, github, etc.), so if my hard disk fails or the machine is stolen or damaged, I can just restore to a new device from time machine and get back to work.
couldn’t you just backup Documents, Movies and Pictures, and maybe a code directory or something? Are you prone to storing important files in many places?