It also supports Apple’s Time Capsule and backup disks connected over a network as long as the disks support AFPS. Back up everything on your Mac directly to your hard drive, in case the Mac cannot upgrade properly. Time Machine can connect to your Mac and any external hard drive via USB, FireWire or Thunderbolt port. If you have never backed up, let me tell you how important it is. This feature was released in OS X 10.5 Leopard. No matter which way you choose, always remember to back up your data before performing an upgrade.Īpple has its own official backup tool: Time Machine. There are two ways to upgrade macOS: directly in Mac App Store, or upgrade using an USB device. If you are running OS X Lion (10.7.5) or later, you can upgrade directly to macOS High Sierra. Some features, such as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) encoding and decoding require newer processors and devices, some of which unfortunately cannot run on older devices.