Any Mac Gurus here ?

[SideShow Bob]

Just back up files to a cloud service. Dropbox, Google drive, etc.

Or use a USB. You can get a 64GB usb for cheap.

How large are the needed files total?

You didn’t tell me that I needed a high speed USB, I got a Cheeto 128 G USB, and it took almost 7 hours to download the backup through “time Machine’”. Now I’ve got the upgrade for El Capitan loading.to the “Ole” Mac. We shall see if it was worth the trouble.

[Gman]

The really cheap USB flash drives, like the Micro Center units at the checkout stand, suck to high heaven on write speed.

I?ve killed large copy jobs after a couple of hours and used a USB 3 spindle drive that was much quicker.

You usually get what you pay for.

[CS1983]

Hey, be grateful you aren't loading from 34 different floppy disks