Is it necessary to buy an External hard drive for backups?

[MacMini2009]

I'm thinking about buying a 1TB external hard drive so I can back up my Mac Mini. Is it really necessary to own an external hard drive? Do you or do you not own one? Why?

 

[spinnerlys]

For a backup it is necessary, as a backup to the internal HDD would defeat the purpose of a backup in case of a system or hardware failure.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

Absolutely necessary! Your hard drive can crap out and you can lose all your data, everything, with no warning. An external drive is a great way, not the only way, but a great way to backup your photos, videos, etc. I have a Western Digital external drive for my iMac. I bought it when my hard drive in my iMac stopped working and was very lucky when the apple store techs were able to save my data. Now, I use the WD drive and time machine and if my hard drive every dies again; I have an easy way to get back all my stuff.

 

[jpyc7]

Well, there seems to be only three options:
1. external HD
2. second internal HD
3. "online backup" via the internet.

If you have a Mac Mini, I assume you don't have space for a second internal HD. So you can either use an external HD or the HD in the internet cloud.

Okay, 4th option is optical disk backup (i.e. CD-RW or DVD-RW) but these are generally much slower.

I do have an external HD for backup and use via Time Machine. My ISP (phone company) supposedly offers me the HD in the internet cloud, but I'm not sure how/if it works with Mac OS. I never investigated that option as I already had my external HD for backup.