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

Best Hard Drive for Time Machine?

M

MacVault

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 10, 2002
1,144
59
Planet Earth
What would you all recommend as the best hard drive for use with Time Machine? USB 2.0 vs Firewire? Is Firewire that much better? Are there any good RAID options out there? Will Time Machine backup over the network?

Also, since Steve Jobs pissed me off when he said this is an "all in one world" at the last iMac release, when is Apple going to start building a second hard drive into all Macs for Time Machine to back up to??? This is an all in one world, right?
 
Firewire is quite a lot faster...TM will only back up to a networked HD if it is connected to another Leopard-running Mac...
 
The best HD for TM is going to be one that is AT LEAST 25% LARGER than your boot drive, or the drive you are backing up.

I'd go with FW400, but if you have a newer machine USB2 should be fine too for a backup drive.

You can find some nice HD deals @ Newegg.
 
Keep in mind after the initial backup, speed really isn't an issue with Time Machine (unless you do changes to multiple documents that are GB's in size). Small changes will sync real quick.

Personally, I'd say go with whatever is the cheapest drive that has the right capacity to fit your needs. USB2 or Firewire.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
The best HD for TM is going to be one that is AT LEAST 25% LARGER than your boot drive, or the drive you are backing up.
Click to expand...

That's assuming your boot disk is 100% full (which would make for very unusable experience). Also, TM will skip over many temporary files (e.g., swap files, cache) and you can set exclusion. For instance, I will exclude Applications folder since I can reinstall them with relative ease.
 
DEFINITELY FW!! I do backups to both, FW400 & USB drives. the FW is faster every time. besides, if you need to, you can boot off the FW drive... something that you cant do w/a USB drive... both BIG factors for me.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
The best HD for TM is going to be one that is AT LEAST 25% LARGER than your boot drive, or the drive you are backing up.

I'd go with FW400, but if you have a newer machine USB2 should be fine too for a backup drive.

You can find some nice HD deals @ Newegg.
Click to expand...

I might go for a FW400 drive, just because it will keep the usb and FW800 ports m/t for something I really need. otherwise I might never use the damn FW400 port at all - what a waste!
 
~J~ said:
DEFINITELY FW!! I do backups to both, FW400 & USB drives. the FW is faster every time. besides, if you need to, you can boot off the FW drive... something that you cant do w/a USB drive... both BIG factors for me.
Click to expand...

Time Machine backups aren't bootable though.
 
Another thing to consider is the number of free ports. I would have no problem hooking up a FW drive to my iMac seeing as the only thing I have plugged in now is a small external drive and occasionally a vid cam. USB though, I have no free slots. So its FW for me unless I want to get a hub (I don't.)
 
~J~ said:
DEFINITELY FW!! I do backups to both, FW400 & USB drives. the FW is faster every time. besides, if you need to, you can boot off the FW drive... something that you cant do w/a USB drive... both BIG factors for me.
Click to expand...

Intel Macs can boot from USB. It is PPC Macs that cannot.
 
Actually since 10.4.x (I think around 10.4.7) you can boot PPC with USB drives. It is slow though to start up, but good enough in emergencies. Note: I have come across some instances of USB drive that don't work for some reason.

Can anyone confirm that TM will work with an internal SATA in a Mac Pro/Power Mac
 
I've got a 1TB Western Digital MyBook drive with FireWire 800 on the way that I'll be using for Time Machine. FireWire 800 is a bit overkill for this purpose, but I'll likely be getting an even bigger drive down the road when prices drop more, and then I can use this as a normal storage drive.

My main concern is that being big enough... I'd like to know a better idea of how much extra space is really needed for the backup plus maybe a couple weeks of the past.
The drives it'll be covering for backup are the 250GB drive that came in my Mac Pro which has the OS and applications installed on it, and a 1TB drive that has my home directory (it's a pair of 1TB drives in a mirrored array). Currently neither drive is even close to being full so the 1TB backup drive will be plenty.. but once the drives fill up, then I wonder how it'll work.. but then again, by that point I may be able to get a 4TB drive or something :cool:
 
Firewire 800 vs Gigabit ethernet drive

I want an external drive for TM but also for video work.

A networked drive would be great (When TM will work with it) for mulitple macs in the house. But I would guess the FW800 would be better for video work.

How does the speed compare on a FW800 and a Gigabit Ethernet drive?
 
nutmac said:
That's assuming your boot disk is 100% full (which would make for very unusable experience). Also, TM will skip over many temporary files (e.g., swap files, cache) and you can set exclusion. For instance, I will exclude Applications folder since I can reinstall them with relative ease.
Click to expand...

I think you have to assume that at some point your HD is going to get pretty close to full. It would be folly to by a 300GB HD to backup your 500GB boot drive just b/c you only have 200GB of data on it. HDs tend to fill up over time.
 
listen what i want to know about time machine is, that i have most of media on an external as it is too large to fit on any stock mac hd. So if i get another external for time machine will it also back up the media files on the other external?
 
~J~ said:
DEFINITELY FW!! I do backups to both, FW400 & USB drives. the FW is faster every time. besides, if you need to, you can boot off the FW drive... something that you cant do w/a USB drive... both BIG factors for me.
Click to expand...
you can boot from USB. Ive booted from USB multiple times, on mutliple Macs, only on intel macs though.
 
Internal HD?

I haven't seen this addressed specifically (despite searching) -- but can't you use an internal drive as a Time Machine drive? Everyone seems to be talking about external drives...

I'd like to stick a 1TB in my Mac Pro's spare slot (oo-er) to use as a TM disk...

http://vizarch.blogspot.com
 
If Apple brings Airport back into the Time Machine feature, you'll want to consider something that has USB connectivity if you want to connect it to your network and allow multiple machines (espeically laptops) to back up to the new drive.
 
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
Back