Best External Hard Drive?

[therealshimmsen]

Hey everyone,

I would be grateful for your advice:

- Plan is to back up two MacBooks on one drive via Time Machine, so I think 4TB should be enough space.
- SSD seems pricey for it just being a backup volume
- I was looking at the G-Drive USB-C, but it does not seem to have the best specs and users complain about noise

What is your go-to Hard Drive in 2021?

I would mainly keep it in the flat, so it does not have to be that small, even though also looks matter

BR from Munich


Matthias

 

[glenthompson]

I've got Seagate and WD drives and no problems with either. No noise problems. I would also recommend a small SSD for each Mac for a clone of the boot drive. Much faster recovery in case of problems. You can also use it to boot on the other Mac if one dies. The Samsung T7 is a good choice for it. Use either Carbon Copy Cloner (my choice) or Super Duper to make the clones. My clones have saved me twice, once due to an failed MacOS upgrade and once due to hardware failure. They also make it easier when performing hardware upgrades such as a disk swap.

 

[GuilleA]

How are you planing to backup both Macs to the drive? Connecting it directly to each one each time or use it via the network?

 

[Geepaw]

Any quality issues with an external hard drive has more to do with the particular production runs rather than brand name. Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba all make good external drives.

 

[ght56]

Any brand will do honestly (there's only 3 left). For a backup drive as such, I would say buy whatever you can find cheapest (or whichever you like the look of most.) Sometimes they last a long time. Other times they die quickly. The USB-C G-Drive is a very reasonable choice and they have a good reputation. I have quite a few G-Tech products, although most of what I have go back to when it was HGST (it is now owned by WD and HGST no longer exists).

That said, if you really don't like noise, a 4 TB SSD isn't a bad investment at all IMHO. They can be had for under $400 USD, they will last you longer than a HDD, if you ever need to go mobile they are vastly better for this, and you don't have to worry about the noise.

 

[HDFan]

hat said, if you really don't like noise, a 4 TB SSD isn't a bad investment at all IMHO. They can be had for under $400 USD, they will last you longer than a HDD, if you ever need to go mobile they are vastly better for this, and you don't have to worry about the noise.

An SSD won't necessarily last longer than a hard disk. If there are large volumes of data activity it may be much less. In an extreme case a hard disk can last 10x longer than an SSD.

Using an SSD for a backup drive isn't a great idea except in special situations (mobility, environment, etc.). You don't need the speed, and you get much greater storage space (and thus backup history) for the same $.

 

[Euroamerican]

I bought a G-Drive in 2013 at the local Apple Store. Relatively expensive, nice to look at, and fast. I was using it as my primary backup for drag and drop archives, contents of hard drives from older computers, etc. 2 TB 5400 or 7200 rpm spinning disk, I believe it was. Spinning disk for sure. NOT SSD.


However, it died after infrequent use after only about a year. I believe that I have most of the original copies of the contents on other miscellaneous storage devices. I'm I have made several attempts to resurrect it, but it it is currently sitting idle for a couple of years until I either will

A. Destroy the drive with a hammer
B. Buy some sort of utility like Disk Warrior to attempt logical resurrection one more time.
C. Give up completely the idea of restoring any data and try a full nuke format, partition...

Disk utility, Disk Drill Pro demo, other demo tools... nothing has worked to bring anything back.

To say that I was disappointed with the G-Drive is an understatement. Maybe they are built better again/now. I don't know.

I'm back to just buying reliable brand name drives when they are on sale, and as the need comes up. The idea of one big central master repository in a shiny metal casing is not currently on my priority list. The thought of the "one big drive" is alluring still. I put it on ignore, that thought!

 

[Fishrrman]

My opinion only.

Don't put "all your data in one basket".
Use TWO drives to back up two MacBooks.
One for each.

Get two 2.5" 2gb platter-based "bare" drives.
I'd suggest Toshiba or HGST (Hitachi).

Get two of these:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

tinyurl.com

Cheap and the drives just snap in.

I'd also suggest you give CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper a try.
Both are FREE to download and try for 30 days.
If you don't like the results, just erase the backup and start over.
But I predict that you WILL like the results.

 

[ght56]

An SSD won't necessarily last longer than a hard disk. If there are large volumes of data activity it may be much less. In an extreme case a hard disk can last 10x longer than an SSD.

Using an SSD for a backup drive isn't a great idea except in special situations (mobility, environment, etc.). You don't need the speed, and you get much greater storage space (and thus backup history) for the same $.

In my experience, they generally do. The average individual does not perform enough writes to rapidly exhaust a modern SSD.

 

[HDFan]

The average individual does not perform enough writes to rapidly exhaust a modern SSD.

My use case is probably a bit different than others. My TM backup disks are 6 TB (for a 4 TB boot drive), which would run maybe $900 (?) for an SSD, $175 for a 6 TB Hard disk. Since I run 2 TM backups, that's $1800 vs $350, 5 times more. A no brainer decision.

Some of the Samsung SSD TBW values are as low as 35 TBW:

SSD Product Warranty | Support | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Samsung ensures the best quality in all products and services beyond customer expectations. Warranty policy, conditions for Internal and Portable SSD.

www.samsung.com

I would wear out the lower valued ones very quickly since I do a lot of 40 TB transfers. Some of my Time Machine hard disks are in the 150 TBW range. But maybe not an "average" use.

 

[ght56]

My use case is probably a bit different than others. My TM backup disks are 6 TB (for a 4 TB boot drive), which would run maybe $900 (?) for an SSD, $175 for a 6 TB Hard disk. Since I run 2 TM backups, that's $1800 vs $350, 5 times more. A no brainer decision.

Some of the Samsung SSD TBW values are as low as 35 TBW:

SSD Product Warranty | Support | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Samsung ensures the best quality in all products and services beyond customer expectations. Warranty policy, conditions for Internal and Portable SSD.

www.samsung.com

I would wear out the lower valued ones very quickly since I do a lot of 40 TB transfers. Some of my Time Machine hard disks are in the 150 TBW range. But maybe not an "average" use.

I would definitely not call that average lol

 

[therealshimmsen]

How are you planing to backup both Macs to the drive? Connecting it directly to each one each time or use it via the network?

Yes, I would connect them directly since I heard that time machine does not work via hard drives that are connected to the router.

 

[QCassidy352]

Yes, I would connect them directly since I heard that time machine does not work via hard drives that are connected to the router.

I can work with a hard drive connected to a router, but there are a lot of factors that go into it working properly, and you may not find it worth it to sort through. I use a WD Elements 4TB hard drive on our network to back up two Macs, and we'd been happy with it until last week, but now it seems the drive may be failing, so I'll withhold my recommendation.