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Good external harddrive for Timemachine?

W

Whackman

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 23, 2012
180
75
Hi Guys and Gals,

I just pulled the plug and ordered a 27inch iMac.
3,5-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost 3,9 GHz
32 GB 1600-MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x 8 GB
1 TB flashstorage
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4 GB GDDR5

Anyone know a good silent fast harddrive for Timemachine?
Maybe 3TB would be enough for TimeMachine i figured.
My eye was on the LaCie D2 3TB USB 3.0 Thunderbolt but i'm not certain that is a good choice.

Thanx ahead!
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
2TB would be plenty for you. That would allow room for a full disk backup and room to spare for versioning. No need to spend extra on a Thunderbolt drive for backups. Just get whatever USB3 drive you can find on sale, they are all pretty much the same.

My personal preference is external drives made by the drive manufacturer themselves, like WD or Seagate. This Seagate model is priced abut $20 less than its WD competitor and would be a good choice. If you find a better deal on another drive, grab it.

Most of what you will get here are anecdotes along the lines of "I owned drive XX and it sucked" or "I owned drive YY and it was great", neither of which really means anything.
 
W

Whackman

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 23, 2012
180
75
Weaselboy said:
2TB would be plenty for you. That would allow room for a full disk backup and room to spare for versioning. No need to spend extra on a Thunderbolt drive for backups. Just get whatever USB3 drive you can find on sale, they are all pretty much the same.

My personal preference is external drives made by the drive manufacturer themselves, like WD or Seagate. This Seagate model is priced abut $20 less than its WD competitor and would be a good choice. If you find a better deal on another drive, grab it.

Most of what you will get here are anecdotes along the lines of "I owned drive XX and it sucked" or "I owned drive YY and it was great", neither of which really means anything.
Click to expand...


Thanx! I guess a Thunderbolt disk is not needed for Timemachine.
I ordered a 3TB (just to be futureproof for a while) Western Digital usb 3.0.

Thanx again
 
I

insane79

macrumors 6502
Aug 20, 2008
276
1
so basically a thunderbolt external drive for time machine is not much different then usb 3? hmmn, i also need an external drive for time machine so will go for a usb3 drive instead :rolleyes:
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
insane79 said:
so basically a thunderbolt external drive for time machine is not much different then usb 3? hmmn, i also need an external drive for time machine so will go for a usb3 drive instead :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Exactly... a hard drive based single external disk cannot even saturate a USB3 connection, so TB is a waste of money.
 
rkaufmann87

rkaufmann87

macrumors 68000
Dec 17, 2009
1,760
39
Folsom, CA
Whackman said:
Hi Guys and Gals,

I just pulled the plug and ordered a 27inch iMac.
3,5-GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost 3,9 GHz
32 GB 1600-MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x 8 GB
1 TB flashstorage
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4 GB GDDR5

Anyone know a good silent fast harddrive for Timemachine?
Maybe 3TB would be enough for TimeMachine i figured.
My eye was on the LaCie D2 3TB USB 3.0 Thunderbolt but i'm not certain that is a good choice.

Thanx ahead!
Click to expand...

The Lacie is a good choice, WD EHD drives have a pretty bad reputation operating with OS X. The issue with WD is the enclosures they use tend to fail within months, while they are cheap they simply do not hold up. In addition WD software is trash and should NEVER be installed.

However if you are looking for quality I strongly recommend OWC's (http://www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro line of EHDs. They tend to cost more than WD or Seagate because they use quality components such as 100% aluminum enclosures with great venting, this means the drive stays cooler than being boxed in a cheap plastic case, this translates into longer life.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
rkaufmann87 said:
The Lacie is a good choice, WD EHD drives have a pretty bad reputation operating with OS X. The issue with WD is the enclosures they use tend to fail within months, while they are cheap they simply do not hold up. In addition WD software is trash and should NEVER be installed.

However if you are looking for quality I strongly recommend OWC's (http://www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro line of EHDs. They tend to cost more than WD or Seagate because they use quality components such as 100% aluminum enclosures with great venting, this means the drive stays cooler than being boxed in a cheap plastic case, this translates into longer life.
Click to expand...

There is nothing wrong with WD drives under OS X. When Mavericks came out there was an incompatibility with some WD software and Mavericks, and once that was addressed by updated WD software, the issue was resolved.

There is nothing really wrong with Lacie or OWC's drives, but all they are really doing IMO is taking a stock WD or Seagate drive and sticking it in a pretty case and marking up the price.
 
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