Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Recommendations for reliable USB Backup Drive?

Dirtyharry50

Dirtyharry50

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 17, 2012
1,769
183
I have endured enough pain and suffering with my current Seagate GoFlex 2TB USB 3.0 drive being used for Time Machine on my mid-2011 27" iMac running OS X 10.8.2. It keeps turning off and disconnecting and its driving me mad. I have been on the phone multiple times with Apple Support and they feel the drive is the issue after all we've tried. I have scoured the Web and discovered many unhappy Seagate customers with Macs who made the mistake of buying this model of USB drive for backups.

So, I am hoping not to make another mistake this time. Thus the request for recommendations of a decent USB Backup drive for use with Time Machine. If it happens to be available on Amazon.com that would be a bonus.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have just bought a Time Capsule instead of a Airport Extreme but too late now.

My hard drive is 1TB and I am wondering if 2TB for the backup was overkill, particularly where 250 gigs is given to a Windows 7 bootcamp partition that is not backed up. It's just for games. I do not create a lot of new data usually so one terabyte would probably be fine. It also does not need to be USB 3.0 since my iMac only supports 2.0.

Anyway, I would be grateful for some tried and true advice here on a current model USB drive that is reliable and just works. That would be wonderful. Thanks.
 
Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,330
12,453
"Anyway, I would be grateful for some tried and true advice here on a current model USB drive that is reliable and just works. That would be wonderful."

I never cared for "pre-packaged" drives. Too much money and all-too-often they are quirky.

If you want something that is "reliable", my advice is to do-it-yourself.
DO NOT feel intimidated by this notion. It's easy. If I can do it (I'm a neanderthal), you can, too.

For backing up, my suggestion is that you spend less than $30 and get something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Dock...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B003UI62AG

Then, get either a 3.5" or a 2.5" "bare drive" from the vendor of your choice. If you're dissatisfied with the drive you have now, you might even open it, take the internal drive out, and put it into the dock.

Just connect the dock to the Mac.
Put the drive into the dock (it just "plugs in").
Turn it on.
Initialize it with Disk Utility.

You now have a backup "docked drive" ready-to-go.
It will be "seen" by the Mac same as an "enclosed" drive.
It's bootable, too (provided you backup the right way, read on).

Also, I would STRONGLY SUGGEST that you STOP using Time Machine for your backups, and instead download and try out CarbonCopyCloner.

CCC will create a bootable "clone" of your internal drive that is identical to the internal drive. It can also do incremental updates, clone the recovery partition, and can even "archive" versions of files like Time Machine does. YOU CAN'T BOOT FROM A TIME MACHINE BACKUP (shouting very intentional).

In a "moment of extreme need" (and you will have one of those someday), the thing you need closest-at-hand is a bootable backup of your internal drive. Just connect it you'll be ready to go in a couple of minutes -- to repair or restore the internal drive. You can't do that with Time Machine.
 
O

old-wiz

macrumors G3
Mar 26, 2008
8,331
228
West Suburban Boston Ma
My thought.....never every trust just one backup drive, whether it's connected via usb, firewire, ethernet, wi-fi, or anything else. Any backup drive can fail, period.

I have three physical drives, all with Superduper clones, and cycle them and keep one in a vault.
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,133
15,596
California
Fishrrman said:
CCC will create a bootable "clone" of your internal drive that is identical to the internal drive. It can also do incremental updates, clone the recovery partition, and can even "archive" versions of files like Time Machine does. YOU CAN'T BOOT FROM A TIME MACHINE BACKUP (shouting very intentional).

In a "moment of extreme need" (and you will have one of those someday), the thing you need closest-at-hand is a bootable backup of your internal drive. Just connect it you'll be ready to go in a couple of minutes -- to repair or restore the internal drive. You can't do that with Time Machine.
Click to expand...

You partly can. You are correct you can't boot and operate the computer from a TM backup, but since 10.7.2 you can boot from a Time Machine drive and use that to format a new drive and completely restore a system. The first TM backup creates a copy of the Recovery HD partition on the TM disk.
 
inscrewtable

inscrewtable

macrumors 68000
Oct 9, 2010
1,656
402
What Fishrrman said is good advice.

With a dock it's easy to slip in another raw internal HDD to create a double back up.

Personally I use the voyager q because I wanted firewire as well as usb 3. It's a pretty solid unit and the best thing about external docks is that they are completely silent. The Voyager also uses the Oxford chipset which I believe is a good thing.

I also use SuperDuper to make a bootable clone I've never had the need to time machine I think it's a bit gimmicky but I'm sure that it has it's uses for some people. However I prefer the watertight security of a bootable clone.
 
Last edited:
Dirtyharry50

Dirtyharry50

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 17, 2012
1,769
183
Weaselboy said:
Many users here have the WD My Passport drives and they seem to work well. I have a 500GB version that has been trouble free. They are pretty reasonably priced also.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much Weaselboy for the recommendation and helpful link. I just purchased it from there. Should be here on Tuesday. :D

Lots of good user feedback on this one from the Amazon site. I checked out the WD site and had no trouble finding the firmware update and Mac ML compatible utilities available for download as well.

It was only 75 bucks and since I have Amazon Prime I got free two day delivery.

Hopefully, I win.

Thanks a lot to everyone else too who took the time to reply. I appreciate it.
 
phoenixsan

phoenixsan

macrumors 65816
Oct 19, 2012
1,342
2
I would go with....

WD, LaCie and Hitachi/Seagate, from first to last. I still own a 250 GB external WD., almost 4 years and no problem in all.:)

:):apple:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom