I'm in the market for an internal HDD to use as a dedicated TM backup drive. The 2 TB WD Caviar Green is going for about $90 on Amazon right now. Seems like it might be a perfect TM backup drive? It's not that fast, but does that really matter for a TM backup? It's also quiet and doesn't use a lot of power. What do you think?
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2 TB WD Caviar Green - Ideal TM Backup Drive?
- Thread starter badlydrawnboy
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Hellhammer
Moderator emeritus
Yeah, IMO low-power drives are the best for backups. It's kinda useless to pay extra for Caviar Black for instance if you aren't taking advantage of its snappiness.
philipma1957
macrumors 604
It's what I use
I use a WD 2TB green as TM backup for a RAID 0 pair of 1TB WD blacks in my 2010 Mac Pro. I know a lot of people on this forum warn against RAID 0, but this combo seems pretty solid to me.
I use a WD 2TB green as TM backup for a RAID 0 pair of 1TB WD blacks in my 2010 Mac Pro. I know a lot of people on this forum warn against RAID 0, but this combo seems pretty solid to me.
Green drives are brilliant for backups (fast enough for that purpose, and it's cheaper for the capacity). 🙂
khollister
macrumors 6502a
Newegg has the Samsung 2TB 5400 RPM Spinpoint drives for $79 free shipping. I have 2 of these and they are very cool and pretty quick considering the 5400 RPM spindle speed. They have a very good rep
Einz
macrumors 6502
I have 6 of the WD Caviar Green 2TB that I use for backup, all stored in a safe-deposit box away from my house. As I've never trusted any backup program that wraps my data into a specially-formatted container that only the backup program can read (you can't even copy a TM backup because of the HFS+ disk structures it uses), I simply copy over all my data once very few months. While the eSATA connection I use is slower with the Green drives, the price alone makes them a very worthwhile backup drive. I plan to replace them with WD Caviar Green 3TB when their price goes down.
rockinrocker
macrumors 65816
I've heard people say they've had bad experiences with the way Amazon packages drives for shipment, especially compared to Newegg.
Anybody with experience care to comment?
Anybody with experience care to comment?
rockinrocker
macrumors 65816
khollister
macrumors 6502a
My experience has been hit or miss. While Amazon doesn't exactly take a lot of care in how they box them, the drives usually come in a package with some type of foam or expanded plastic shock absorbing packing (even the OEM ones). It would be nice if they took more care, but I have yet to actually have a problem with one I've gotten there.
Newegg is a little better, but not much in my opinion.
It seems that newegg differs depending on where the order is shipped from (seems the CA location does well, but not all of them, as I've gotten drives that had a little bubble wrap on them, and the rest of the box was filled with brown paper).
Amazon hasn't been much different (plastic air bags), but the drive (retail, not OEM) was able to shift around the box they sent it in. No damage though (ran a surface scan before using it).
Just got it from Amazon. Packaging as good as from anywhere else. Outer Amazon box, with smaller cardboard box with the drive in it, supported by thost plastic drive tray thingies. Seemed no different than OWC or other distributors.
Not true. You can just copy whatever you want from a TM folder. Without using TM. Just drag and drop.