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Good Powered External Hard Drive recommendations (Not Seagate please)

M

mk313

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Feb 6, 2012
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I've been having trouble with Time Machine not backing up my computers. I tried Carbon Copy Cloner & that worked well for the last two weeks, but now I got a message that my Time Capsule Hard Drive is failing. So maybe that was the issue with Time Machine as well.

I've replaced the hard drive in the Time Capsule one time already (original drive was Seagate, replacement was also Seagate), so looking to try something else. One of the sites I read recommended using a powered external drive attached to the USB port on the Time Capsule & I'm leaning that direction.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good POWERED hard drive that doesn't use Seagate drives, or if you have any advice on things I should look out for? I'v only ever bought one external drive before and it worked fine, but figured I'd seek out advice from others who may have more experience than I do. The last time capsule drive I bought was an 8 GB one & I still have plenty of space left, so something around that size would probably be fine.
 
mk313 said:
One of the sites I read recommended using a powered external drive attached to the USB port on the Time Capsule & I'm leaning that direction.
Click to expand...
Time Capsule USB is 2.0... awfully slow. Plus, TC uses SMB v1 which more recent macOS version have compatibility issues related to auth and throughput. I loved my Airport devices... 10 years ago. It's time to move on, my friend.
 
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I have always used Lacie D2 Professional HDD's for Time Machine and SD clones.
These DO use seagate as it's the same company, but never had an issue all the way back to my G4.

I recently (12 months ago) swapped my G4 Powerbook drive to an SSD and accessed my cloned data from a drive unused for about 10 years without issue.

Edit: Actually my older drives are D2 Quadra, not Pro.....🤭
 
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goodthymes said:
Have you considered putting an SATA SSD in your Timecapsule, since you've already have experience openning it once already? Or an nvme drive with sata adapter.
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I have thought about it, but I'm not sure what type drive I would need (to be more specific, what SSD would physically fit fit into the Time Capsule enclosure & interface with the plug that is already in there). Opening the Time Capsule wasn't that bad, and I wouldn't mind doing it again ti move to an SSD. Not sure what a nvme drive is, but I'll google that.
 
Bigwaff said:
Time Capsule USB is 2.0... awfully slow. Plus, TC uses SMB v1 which more recent macOS version have compatibility issues related to auth and throughput. I loved my Airport devices... 10 years ago. It's time to move on, my friend.
Click to expand...
Man, The only reason I stick with the Time Capsules is that they are so reliable network wise & I'm not a networking guy. I don't want anything that I can screw up. These have been rock solid for as long as I've had them, but the backup part is frustrating.
 
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MarkC426 said:
I have always used Lacie D2 Professional HDD's for Time Machine and SD clones.
These DO use seagate as it's the same company, but never had an issue all the way back to my G4.

I recently (12 months ago) swapped my G4 Powerbook drive to an SSD and accessed my cloned data from a drive unused for about 10 years without issue.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the recommendation. Good to hear that someone else has had good luck with them. Maybe I'll check them out. I'm just 0 for 2 on Seagate's so far, so I'm leary of trying again.
 
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mk313 said:
Thanks for the recommendation. Good to hear that someone else has had good luck with them. Maybe I'll check them out. I'm just 0 for 2 on Seagate's so far, so I'm leary of trying again.
Click to expand...
I understand, however Lacie (although using Seagate) are a more premium brand so they have higher end drives.
 
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mk313 said:
I've been having trouble with Time Machine not backing up my computers. I tried Carbon Copy Cloner & that worked well for the last two weeks, but now I got a message that my Time Capsule Hard Drive is failing. So maybe that was the issue with Time Machine as well.

I've replaced the hard drive in the Time Capsule one time already (original drive was Seagate, replacement was also Seagate), so looking to try something else. One of the sites I read recommended using a powered external drive attached to the USB port on the Time Capsule & I'm leaning that direction.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good POWERED hard drive that doesn't use Seagate drives, or if you have any advice on things I should look out for? I'v only ever bought one external drive before and it worked fine, but figured I'd seek out advice from others who may have more experience than I do. The last time capsule drive I bought was an 8 GB one & I still have plenty of space left, so something around that size would probably be fine.
Click to expand...

I’ve used external hard drives for decades and the best drives out there are Seagate or Western Digital. In my opinion, Seagate is far better as I’ve experienced several failures with WD and not one with Seagate.

I recommend the Seagate Expansion Desktop hard drive. Prior to moving to OWC raid, I used these as my FCP storage and scratch drives, and had 8 to 10 of them, for years, without a single failure.
 
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Just a note it might not be the drive itself. I had a failure that I thought was the HDD, but it turned out to be the controller chip in the external drive unit. I had an external DVD drive fail the same way, the drive still works to this day, but the electronics in the external case did not.

If you changed the hard drive already and still have the same problem it's time to try replacing the other end. External cases are really available if a direct connection is acceptable, a network drive costs more but is more flexible, etc. OWC has both if you don't trust Amazon. They are not the cheapest, but more dependable than Amazon's stuff unless you are careful.

PS, I had a Western Digital NVME stick die last month. They are not immortal either. Sometimes it almost worked, but it wouldn't stay working, then it refused to be recognized at all. The new SSD is notably faster, so the old one may have been failing for awhile.
 
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Seagate is what I rely on but not the standard barracuda drives. Get an IronWolf or IronWolf Pro. Both of these come with a real warranty. The Pro comes with a 3 year warranty and data recovery (you can purchase a 5 year warranty, 4 year data recovery). The warranty for the standard IronWolf is 3 years with 3 years data recovery. I know I sound like a salesperson(I’m not) but I would not stick with drives that constantly give me problems and I would never recommend them if they weren’t any good.
BTW I always stay away from WD, but that’s just me.
 
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MarkC426 said:
I have always used Lacie D2 Professional HDD's for Time Machine and SD clones.
These DO use seagate as it's the same company, but never had an issue all the way back to my G4.

I recently (12 months ago) swapped my G4 Powerbook drive to an SSD and accessed my cloned data from a drive unused for about 10 years without issue.
Click to expand...
IMG_4420.jpeg
 
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I think there are only three HDD manufacturers left, and they all are about the same quality, with variations here and there by model/production batch, etc. Any “external package” you get will use a drive from one of those three manufacturers.

If you want to avoid Seagate though, just look for a Western Digital My Book. That would be an externally powered enclosure with a Western Digital HDD.

Personally I always get an external enclosure from somewhere like OWC, and then get a higher end HDD to lut in. That might be more effort than you are looking to get into though. Besides any drive can fail. Probably better off just getting a simple MyBook and making sure to have multiple backups.
 
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Siliconguy said:
Just a note it might not be the drive itself. I had a failure that I thought was the HDD, but it turned out to be the controller chip in the external drive unit. I had an external DVD drive fail the same way, the drive still works to this day, but the electronics in the external case did not.

If you changed the hard drive already and still have the same problem it's time to try replacing the other end. External cases are really available if a direct connection is acceptable, a network drive costs more but is more flexible, etc. OWC has both if you don't trust Amazon. They are not the cheapest, but more dependable than Amazon's stuff unless you are careful.

PS, I had a Western Digital NVME stick die last month. They are not immortal either. Sometimes it almost worked, but it wouldn't stay working, then it refused to be recognized at all. The new SSD is notably faster, so the old one may have been failing for awhile.
Click to expand...
Thanks. That's a good point about it maybe not being the drives.
 
You’re not me said:
Seagate is what I rely on but not the standard barracuda drives. Get an IronWolf or IronWolf Pro. Both of these come with a real warranty. The Pro comes with a 3 year warranty and data recovery (you can purchase a 5 year warranty, 4 year data recovery). The warranty for the standard IronWolf is 3 years with 3 years data recovery. I know I sound like a salesperson(I’m not) but I would not stick with drives that constantly give me problems and I would never recommend them if they weren’t any good.
BTW I always stay away from WD, but that’s just me.
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Dang it. I don't know what the first drive was (it was whatever came in the Airport) but the replacement was a Seagate IronWolf 8TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD. Of course I bought it Aug 13, 2020, so just outside of the warranty period.

But that's good to know, thanks for the reply.
 
mk313 said:
I don't know what the first drive was (it was whatever came in the Airport)
Click to expand...

All the spinning drives I have ever seen in an Apple Product have been HGST (no longer exists, assets sold to Western Digital), Toshiba, or Panasonic (no longer exist).
 
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You need not abandon your Time Capsule yet (for networking purposes) if you are not ready, but you should be prepared to move on when it inevitably fails or you see something with newer tech you like and feel comfortable with. I would start preparing for that transition now and just pick up your typical $100 5TB bus-powered USB hard drive and start using that for Time Machine (or a few smaller ones depending on how many machines you're backing up). You could go bigger of course (2-bay NAS) but for pricing and simplicity nothing really beats the portable USB hard drives.
 
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I’m also in the boat of buying the enclosure and then the disk separately, sometimes circuits of these external drives fail and you may lose access to a good shape disk.

In case is not what you want, i always have very good results with Western Digital element disks.
 
robertosh said:
I’m also in the boat of buying the enclosure and then the disk separately, sometimes circuits of these external drives fail and you may lose access to a good shape disk.

In case is not what you want, i always have very good results with Western Digital element disks.
Click to expand...
I won't buy HD ever again. I did buy this for new SSD.

www.owc.com

OWC Express 1M2: Portable USB4 NVMe M.2 SSD Solution

Offers incredible speeds of up to 3836MB/s, DIY flexibility with NVMe M.2 SSDs, and compatible with USB4, Thunderbolt, and USB-C computers and devices.
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