Backup question

[SnowQore]

Model: MacBook Pro, 13-inch, Late 2011
OSX: El Capitan v10.11.3

Please excuse my post, I know I could've followed a simple YouTube video, but I really don't wanna mess up

My parent's laptop (info above) is being slow nowadays, so I want to backup everything in either an External Hard Drive, or on my Time Capsule (I'd prefer this one, because I never used it)

I would use this one:

Or I could buy an external hard drive, there's no problem.

So how can I backup the MacBook Pro?, I just want to send all the files over there, I don't want to delete profiles/accounts, and if possible I don't want to remove programs either, how do I do it?, thanks in advance!

 

[honestone]

From what I am reading, your Time Capsule cannot be used like an external hard drive. So, it might be best if you purchase an external drive. SSDs are the best, and are getting cheaper and cheaper. In fact, you can save some money by purchasing the "bare" drive itself, along with a nice external enclosure. And USB 3.0 connectivity should be fast enough.

Now, the purpose of making backups is to have a way to recover from a "disaster". Time Machine is "OK" for that, but recovering from a disaster is somewhat of a chore with a Time Machine backup. If instead you use either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable/clone/backup of all your stuff on your internal drive, then recovery will go a lot smoother. It's up to you.