Which storage device to buy?

You don't need a RAID. As others have said here, "RAID is NOT a backup".

Have you considered a USB3/SATA docking station, and several "bare drives" that you can swap around as necessary?

To see what a dock is, go to amazon and enter "usb3 sata dock" in the search box, and you'll get many choices. They typically cost less than $25.

Just store the drives carefully, and this could work well for "backup purposes".

RAID is not a system that is for backup purposes at all, and since you do not know much about it you should not mess with it. I do like the dock option, aside from the fact that the drives are then open. Have you considered a NAS and then using the Time Capsule for Time Machine? That also depends a lot on the network speed and therefore is an iffy question. Are all of your external drives connected via USB?

You could also consider backup services like Crashplan for backing up all your files. That takes care of the case where your house burns down or similar calamity. You need a fast connection for the initial upload.

I like a NAS because it gives me a lot of flexibility. I keep time machine backups as well as media files on my Synology. I have bare drive backups of the non-TM files made using a drive dock. I can also access the files from my iPad.

Last thing to remember is that any backup that hasn't been tested is not a backup. Make sure you can get your files back.

gsusser said:

Thanks for all the responses. I really appreciate it.

However, not to sound like the idiot I am, can someone just tell me what to buy? I looked at NAS devices and while I really don't understand the technology after reading up on it, from what I gather, it seems like something a lot more sophisticated than I need. The ones I looked at all refer to surveillance systems. In any event, I don't doubt what you guys say and am willing to take your advice. But please, I think I gave enough info for a recommendation for a specific device. If I didn't, just let me know what else I can tell you.

As far as a remote backup, that's out of the question as far as expense and time to back up.

Many thanks and I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

Click to expand...

Well, we're trying to help you decide what to buy, but it's not as simple as buying a big hard drive and being done with it.

You have a number of drives being swapped in and out. You may be better off using one big external drive to store your data (instead of multiple drives, each which a special use) and a second big external drive or NAS to act as a Time Machine backup.

A NAS is basically a hard drive that connects over Ethernet/wif instead of being directly attached to the machine. The upside is that they can be accessed over wifi or Ethernet, so you don't have to have anything else physically connected to your machine. Very convenient. And multiple machines can connect at the same time. The downside is that they generally much slower than directly attached storage. For example, you would not want to edit HD video off of one. But for what you do, a NAS may be fast enough.

The upside to a physically attached HDD is that they're fast, generally speaking, but of course they have to be plugged in - inconvenient if you're using a laptop. And if they're not plugged in, then they can't be backed up, etc.

So we need to know from you where your priorities are, what your use model is, and what your budget is.

New Monoprice Thunderbolt Storage Enclosures

Oops wrong thread....

[[ I am totally paranoid of a docking station thinking I won't know how to hook it up. ]]

Can you plug a USB cable into the back of the Mac?

Can you put a slice of bread into a toaster?

Seriously -- it's THAT easy.

[[ Fisherman, as for a docking station, if that's the answer for me, can you recommend one along with discs? ]]

I've had good luck with these two docks from plugable.com:
http://plugable.com/products/USB3-SATA-U3
and
http://plugable.com/products/USB3-SATA-UASP1

They also have a dual-USB3/SATA dock for 2.5" drives:
http://plugable.com/products/pss-dd1

(Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the above company other than being a satisfied and paying customer)

You can use either 3.5" or 2.5" "bare drives". In my experience, there's no problem with handling and swapping bare drives, just so long as you exercise reasonable care with them --- as in "don't drop" them, etc. You'd probably want to hunt down a storage solution if you manage several drives -- plastic storage box, etc.

As to which manufacturer's drives to buy, well, that's more of a subjective question. Personally, I would avoid Western Digital. Seagate is perhaps a little better. Samsung drives seem to last well enough.

As to which form factor to use (3.5" vs. 2.5") -- I'm of the mind lately that if I need one or more drives for backup storage, I may get 2.5". They seem to be designed "with user-handling in mind" -- insofar as many go into laptops that get carried and jostled around.

I've also concluded that "smaller is somewhat better". That is, I wouldn't buy a 4gb drive, but two 2gb drives. More drives to handle, but "less lost" in the case of a drive failure. (Aside: when I started out with hard drives, a 20 MEGAbyte drive was "large".)

Where to buy? Amazon.com and newegg.com would be my "go to" sources, but I'm not averse to buying elsewhere.

One advantage of the "drive in a dock" scenario is that you're not locked into "drives in enclosures" -- if a drive fails, just swap it for another. If the dock has problems, just get another dock and keep on using the drives.

The disadvantage? It doesn't "look so snazzy" sitting on your desk. But the "function" exceeds the "style" in such a setup...

Don't "overthink" this. Backup is backup. Just decide what kind of drives you want, how you're going to hook them up, then do it...

[[ Amazon's largest drive is only 1TB, at least under the search I did for Samsung drives. The one above is $75. That seems like a lot of money especially if I have to buy a minimum of 4. And it might be a pain in the a$$ backing up more than 1TB of data. I would prefer 2TB drives. Or perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place? ]]

You might need to pick up two 3.5" drives of 2tb size.

And a dock that can handle a 3.5" drive, as well (see above post).

How many drives are you going to be backing up?
two?
three?
four?

You can back up two separate drives to one larger drive, if the larger one can hold all the content.

The trick is to PARTITION the backup drive into two "volumes".
Then, use CarbonCopyCloner to backup one source drive to the first partition, and the other source drive to the second partition.

Just remember that when it's time to DISmount the drive and remove it from the dock, you first have to drag BOTH partitions to the trash.

I picked up the WD Mycloud 3tb and so far not impressed. I have had several issues getting it initialized and updating the firmware. I am also having issues keeping it connected to the network. After doing a Google search this seems to be a common problem with many users. If it will not stay connected and the only wat to see it again is a power cycle it's not much use to me and my needs

[[ I ended up getting a Startech USB3 4 bay docking station ...]]

I have several docking stations, but they are all "1-bay" types.

Just wondering --
With the 4-bay dock, are you able to mount and dis-mount single drives individually?
With no interference or problems regarding -other drives- which may be mounted?

The whole thing works with the Mac OS, without problems?