Looking to get a new hard drive for my backups, and was wondering which drives/makers are recommended. It's been awhile since I've kept up with the latest in hard drives, so I was curious as to which current brands I should look at, and which ones I should avoid.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Best Current Hard Drive for Backups?
- Thread starter Kiki61
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I personally like the LaCie drives. They seem to be great quality and I've been using a 2TB Porsche Design external drive from them for backup for quite some time now. http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Porsche...790&sr=1-3&keywords=lacie+external+hard+drive
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
My personal preference are the G-Tech, Seagate or Promise. Seagate is the most reasonable price of the three. I am currently using all three types and have been for years. So far I have never had one fail and one of my G-Techs is going on 7 years now. G-Tech & Promise are expensive, but I always say you pay for what you get.
Every drive company out there has either been purchased or merged with Western Digital or Seagate, so most any drive you buy will have one of those (or a subsidiary company) drives inside. One is really no better than the other. Just grab whichever WD or Seagate 3.5 inch USB3 drive you can get the best price on in the size you want. Just plug it in and format to HFS+ on your Mac, and off you go.
Whichever brand and size you buy, there is always the possibility that the drive will die. I would never depend on a single external drive for backup. The safe thing is to have more than one copy, preferably two, with one offsite. You can't have too many backup drives.
And when the internal drive dies, replace it with an HGST Ultrastar, or whatever's better in time of need. But how much space are we talkin' here? If you only need 250GB or so, and your internet connection is beefy, I'd go with a paid cloud-based storage.
