Recommendations for Time Machine external drive

[interbear]

I use a LaCie Porsche Design 4TB drive for Time Machine back up of my MBP 16 inch. Or I did. Earlier this week it refused to mount so Time Machine back up failed. It’s failed to mount since then and is greyed out in Disk Utility. As it can’t mount, first aid can not be performed. I’ve tried changing USB-C cables and ports. I’ve unpowered and restarted both the MBP and LaCie multiple times. No luck. The drive is powered and the led flickers constantly for hours which means it’s trying to access data. But it can’t mount or read the drive at all.

So I’ve concluded it’s dead and needs replaced. Which is painful because as well as Time Machine, the LaCie external was also where I kept older documents that I didn’t keep on my MBP internal hard drive as they are rarely used. So they are gone. Lesson learned.

I’ve decided to go for dual on site back up this time, so either 2 drives that I will rotate for Time Machine, or a dual drive with RAID redundancy. Any recommendations? Soooo many options out there. I also use OneDrive to keep a copy of my documents in the cloud (MS365 subscription) and iCloud for Photos.

 

[Prorege1]

Using the ready to go raid 4TB solution from WD, it was the cheapest option I could find in the NAS jungle with pre-installed reliable WD disks https://shop.westerndigital.com/pro...ud-expert-series-ex2-ultra#WDBVBZ0000NCH-NESN - if spending more money Synology is also a great option.

 

[interbear]

Thanks @Prorege1 I was looking at the WD dual options but not sure I need a NAS as it’s only for back up, I use the 1TB SSD in the MBP as my primary drive. So possibly the MyBook Duo which is a simpler dual drive RAID option might be a decent choice.

Either that or I was considering buying 2 WD My Passport for Mac drives and rotating them for Time Machine. Added benefit is I could use one of them as a portable drive as and when needed. And they are bus powered.

 

[Prorege1]

Yes USB powered, I'm actually also using a 4TB WD My Passport as an extra backup disk attached to my old Time Capsule.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I like the Samsung T5. Small, fast and gets the job done quietly.

 

[interbear]

I like the Samsung T5. Small, fast and gets the job done quietly.

I had a Samsung T5 2TB and was originally using it for Time Machine back up. I decided that was perhaps overkill for Time Machine so I sold the T5 and went back to my older (and much cheaper) LaCie external drive for back ups. Definitely regretting that decision, the T5 worked flawlessly. Not sure I can afford 2 of them though, I’ve decided I want to back up my back up after this experience!

 

[interbear]

I decided to go with the 2 portable USB-C drives. Ordered a WD My Passport for Mac 4TB today. Will use that only for Time Machine back ups so the standard HDD speed will be fine. When Black Friday weekend arrives I will add a 2TB SSD which I'll partition and use as a 2nd drive for Time Machine backup plus as a mobile drive to carry files around as and when I need.

 

[BrianBaughn]

There's a chance your LaCie 4TB housing/electronics/power supply is shot and the drive is OK.

Slow HDs are fine for TM backups…until you have to actually restore a complete system from them!

 

[interbear]

There's a chance your LaCie 4TB housing/electronics/power supply is shot and the drive is OK.

Slow HDs are fine for TM backups…until you have to actually restore a complete system from them!

Agreed on both counts. I did try to extract the drive from the LaCie housing. It‘s one of the enclosed “Porsche Design” enclosures so there was no obvious way to do it. I tried and ended up slicing my finger open trying to prise it apart with a knife, so I’ll get back to that another day

And the reason I intend to add another external SSD to the equation is partly for the reason you note. The WD HDD will be fine to sit in the background for backups but I’ll connect the SSD occasionally for Time Machine too.

 

[tyc0746]

I thought it was just me with USB-powered HDD issues.

My LaCie drives tend to last about a year before they stop working on everything but computers (i.e. they still work, but mount slowly, on PC/Mac, but won’t mount on other devices like DVRs/TVs/Xbox as external media drives.

The externally-powered WD Desktop ones are fine after 6 years (assuming the power supply doesn’t die). Pity the LaCie devices have no external power capability (even tried USB y-cables to provide more power, but results were unreliable).

 

[satcomer]

I decided to go with the 2 portable USB-C drives. Ordered a WD My Passport for Mac 4TB today. Will use that only for Time Machine back ups so the standard HDD speed will be fine. When Black Friday weekend arrives I will add a 2TB SSD which I'll partition and use as a 2nd drive for Time Machine backup plus as a mobile drive to carry files around as and when I need.

You might want to get a NAS two bay or even 4 bay smart NAS to store you music/videos onto it!

 

[Fishrrman]

My suggestions for the future:
(totally unsolicited)

STOP using time machine.
Instead, START USING either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Either one will create BOOTABLE cloned backups that will not keep "growing" like a tm backup will.

Thus, if you have a 2tb internal drive, a 2tb cloned backup will do fine.

If you have a 1tb drive in the MBP, a 1tb external USB3 SSD would be an ideal backup. And... if you ever get into an "I can't boot!" moment with the MBP, just plug in the backup and boot from that...

 

[interbear]

I thought it was just me with USB-powered HDD issues.

My LaCie drives tend to last about a year before they stop working on everything but computers (i.e. they still work, but mount slowly, on PC/Mac, but won’t mount on other devices like DVRs/TVs/Xbox as external media drives.

The externally-powered WD Desktop ones are fine after 6 years (assuming the power supply doesn’t die). Pity the LaCie devices have no external power capability (even tried USB y-cables to provide more power, but results were unreliable).

The LaCie drive that failed for me this week was externally powered, not USB powered. A smart Porsche Design enclosure but externally powered. It lasted 3 years.

 

[ght56]

Are you storing files other than Time Machine data on this new drive? Do you have an estimate of what type of capacity you would need? Do you want a pure DAS solution or do you want NAS capability?

Hardware RAID 1 seems like a likely candidate depending on your capacity needs.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

Time Machine is fine for an incremental backup. It's slow so fast backup drive hardware is a waste of money. I always buy a bare 3.5" HDD and the appropriate cheap disk enclosure.

Time Machine is also untrustworthy enough where I wouldn't count on it for a full backup. It is better to complement a TM backup with a full disk clone snapshot using a utility like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.

A full disk bootable clone is worth having a high-performance drive (like NVMe SSD).

When I migrate from my current Mojave boot drive to Big Sur, I will keep an external Mojave NVMe SSD for the lifetime of my Mac mini 2018.

 

[interbear]

Are you storing files other than Time Machine data on this new drive? Do you have an estimate of what type of capacity you would need? Do you want a pure DAS solution or do you want NAS capability?

Hardware RAID 1 seems like a likely candidate depending on your capacity needs.

Only Time Machine, the WD My Passport for Mac is now working fine for this. I did consider Raid 1 dual drives but decided to opt for 2 portable drives that I will rotate and use both for Time Machine.

 

[diane143]

I thought it was just me with USB-powered HDD issues.

My LaCie drives tend to last about a year before they stop working on everything but computers (i.e. they still work, but mount slowly, on PC/Mac, but won’t mount on other devices like DVRs/TVs/Xbox as external media drives.

The externally-powered WD Desktop ones are fine after 6 years (assuming the power supply doesn’t die). Pity the LaCie devices have no external power capability (even tried USB y-cables to provide more power, but results were unreliable).

I think all but one of the external LaCie drives I've bought over many years have died - and they were all externally powered. I'd only get a few years out of them.

After my last one, I got (2) WD Books, I think in 2016, and so far so good.

 

[interbear]

The WD Passport for Mac 4TB is quietly running away doing Time Machine. Also just ordered a Samsung T7 SSD 2TB for a good Black Friday price as the next step in my back up strategy. I’ll partition this and use it for occasional Time Machine backups as well as other portable storage. That means I will have 2 Time Machine back-ups for everything on my MacBook Pro, plus cloud back ups (iCloud for photos / music and One Drive for documents). I’m happy with that.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I think if I had a double-backup situation I'd make one of them a clone…daily at the least.

 

[Rob9874]

I'm ready to make the jump from TM to CCC. Few questions:
1) Do I want to continue to use TM as a compliment to CCC, or just have 2 drives backed up with CCC?
2) I'm using a 1TB Samsung T5 now to backup my 512GB macbook hdd. Assuming that would work for a CCC drive, or would there be any benefit to upgrading to the faster T7?
3) I want to get my wife and my brother externals so they can use TM at least. Would you recommend a cheap WD Passport, or an SSD like the T5? They both have newer MacBooks with USB-C, so I think I'd prefer a USB-C drive. Any opinions on the cheap Toshibas with USB-C?

 

[Cassandle]

I could do with some advice, similar to the OP.

I'm running the new M1 Mini (256GB), so ports are at a premium.

I have a 1TB Seagate USB drive which I use for Time Machine backups.

Looking for something to offload media files to (music and photos mostly) and to potentially provide a second backup.

1. It seems that people are not Time Machine fans. Is it worth moving to something like CCC (and if so, why?)
2. Can you partition a drive and use it for storing media and also for a backup? Is this advisable? If not, what would be a good alternative?

 

[Prorege1]

1. Time Machine is fine (and free)
2. With a limited M1 storage you can use the above mentioned WD 4 TB disk, but if you need it to offload media it's risky to use a single disk only. I'm using this WD 4TB NAS for Time Machine back up and media, it has two disks in RAID and is relatively affordable with the disks preinstalled/ready to use: https://shop.westerndigital.com/pro...ud-expert-series-ex2-ultra#WDBVBZ0040JCH-NESN

 

[Fishrrman]

Rob wrote in #20 above:
"I want to get my wife and my brother externals so they can use TM at least. Would you recommend a cheap WD Passport, or an SSD like the T5?"

I wouldn't recommend ANY WD platter-based drive. Too many failures.

You could look for a relatively cheap "pre-packaged" SSD like the t5, or, another option:

Get "bare" 2.5" SSDs, and then drop them into a case like this:

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

Get the SAME SIZE drive as their internal drives are.
Then set them up with CCC.
The cloned backups will never "grow larger" than the source drives.

 

[ght56]

I could do with some advice, similar to the OP.

I'm running the new M1 Mini (256GB), so ports are at a premium.

I have a 1TB Seagate USB drive which I use for Time Machine backups.

Looking for something to offload media files to (music and photos mostly) and to potentially provide a second backup.

1. It seems that people are not Time Machine fans. Is it worth moving to something like CCC (and if so, why?)
2. Can you partition a drive and use it for storing media and also for a backup? Is this advisable? If not, what would be a good alternative?

You would want a second physical disk or, as noted, a NAS setup that automatically stores files to two or more separate physical drives (e.g., RAID 1). You do not want any files on only a single disk as if that disk fails you are in trouble. If you offload media files to an external drive, you want to back those media files up to a second external drive.

CCC offers a different type of backup in the sense that it can be bootable and it can be a carbon clone that reflects everything on the disk at the time of backup. As your SSD is only 256 GB, you would only need a 256 GB SSD or HDD to make one full carbon clone (alternatively, a 512 GB SSD could be partitioned and used to make two carbon clones, and so on). Time Machine, on the other hand, is incremental and keeps multiple copies of files as they change and it does this automatically. Time Machine can do a full restoration of an entire operating system, but it does not always work. Subsequently, I like to have both, and I use separate physical disks for each.

 

[satcomer]

If I were you I would get the Glyph Thunderbolt 3 NVME Dock and buy a Larger NVME for it that you can afford (and is larger than your internal drive).

This way you could still use you older externals with that DocK!