I am looking to back up my MAC, and I need to know how big of an external hard drive I need

I am looking to back up my MAC, and I need to know how big of an external hard drive I need. How do I determine this?

Well, they recommend at least 2 - 3 times the size of your hard drive if you are using Time Machine because that keeps making backups until it runs out of space (and then deletes the oldest to make room for the newest).
However, if you prefer to have a bootable clone as a backup, you need about the same size as your hard drive since it is a perfect copy of your system (unless you want to partition and keep an older clone separately).
So, check to see how large your hard drive is and go from there.

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