Time Machine External Drive Recommendation

[insimbi]

I just received my new 2019 iMac and I haven't even been able to use it yet because it's taking FOREVER to restore my Time Machine backup from my old external WD drive (it's not USB 3.0).
I am now looking for a large, external drive I can use with Time Machine. I was looking at the WD Passport Ultra drives but read they don't play nice with Time Machine. I need something like a 2TB drive. Any recommendations???

I've ordered a Samsung X5 for external data storage, but I don't want to spend that kind of money on a drive solely for Time Machine.

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[chabig]

I was looking at the WD Passport Ultra drives but read they don't play nice with Time Machine.

All hard drives are the same, and any will work with Time Machine. Some vendors (including WD I think) ship their drives with custom software and ask that you install special software. It’s all crap. MacOS has everything it needs to work with hard drives. The first thing you should do when you get a new drive is open Disk Utility and simply reformat the drive, which wipes it of any crapware and formats it for the Mac (many drives come preformatted for Windows). For Time Machine, you must select the GUID partition scheme and format as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202784

 

[wardie]

Post above is spot on I’ve never had any problem with using any type of USB external drive with time machine. For example one I use is this cheap and big, but any will do, 5TB WD Elements. I would recommend getting one at least double the size of the amount of data you have, so that you get a decent headroom for storing a multiple time slices of history... sometimes you never know how far back to you need to go get a file or revert your whole system to...
https://www.amazon.com/Wd-Elements-Desktop-Drive-WDBWLG0050HBK-NESN/dp/B00PDDFMLG

 

[AppleFan360]

I feel you with the Time Machine restore. It takes forever. Even the incremental backups IMHO take too long. This time I invested in a 2TB SSD and enclosure for Time Machine so the incremental backup and restore are a snap. I know its an expensive proposition just for a backup but in the long run it will be worth it.

 

[Zdigital2015]

I just received my new 2019 iMac and I haven't even been able to use it yet because it's taking FOREVER to restore my Time Machine backup from my old external WD drive (it's not USB 3.0).
I am now looking for a large, external drive I can use with Time Machine. I was looking at the WD Passport Ultra drives but read they don't play nice with Time Machine. I need something like a 2TB drive. Any recommendations???

I've ordered a Samsung X5 for external data storage, but I don't want to spend that kind of money on a drive solely for Time Machine.

Any help would be appreciated!

Buy an economical USB 3.0 enclosure from Satechi, Nextstar, et al., crack open the WD casing (if you can), yank the old drive out and put it in the new case. Even though the WD HDD is still not very fast overall, you may see better transfer rates than you did via USB 2.0. This is all predicated on the notion that your old WD HDD still has enough life left in it to make it worthwhile. If its really old, and you are located in the US, wait for Best Buy to have a sale on a WD EasyStore 3.5" HDD and snag one of them. Right now, I see the 8TB model is $190.00. Good luck!

 

[Lee_Bo]

In my early days of Mac I did use WD drives exclusively but then suffered two WD drive failures within 6 months of each other, and these were relatively new drives (less than 18 months old). Since then I use these and have had no issues:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FRHTSK4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Recently I bought this enclosure and also purchased two 1TB drives:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074NM3ZXS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[dcpmark]

I feel you with the Time Machine restore. It takes forever. Even the incremental backups IMHO take too long. This time I invested in a 2TB SSD and enclosure for Time Machine so the incremental backup and restore are a snap. I know its an expensive proposition just for a backup but in the long run it will be worth it.

I had an extra 1TB Samsung 850 SSD lying around, so I bought a cheap USB 3.1 enclosure from OWC and it’s now repurposed as my Time Machine. Fast, quiet....can’t recommend this enough.

 

[goldbuffalo]

There is a way to wipe out your time machine back up, then do a fresh new time machine back up. Maybe that would go faster restoring to the new, just a theory.

 

[BigMcGuire]

I got this at Costco: https://www.costco.com/Seagate-Back...Data-Recovery-Services.product.100458004.html

Absolutely love it. It's a little loud but it will be my backup drive for the next 5-6 years.

Was using those tiny WD Passports for my TM / CCC backups before but I was not impressed with their reliability and speed.

I do use a 500GB SSD I had laying around (like dcpmark) and put it in an external enclosure and I use that for one of my CCC copies. Super fast, always nice having a bootable copy laying around just in case I need it.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

I got this at Costco: https://www.costco.com/Seagate-Back...Data-Recovery-Services.product.100458004.html

Absolutely love it. It's a little loud but it will be my backup drive for the next 5-6 years.

Was using those tiny WD Passports for my TM / CCC backups before but I was not impressed with their reliability and speed.

I do use a 500GB SSD I had laying around (like dcpmark) and put it in an external enclosure and I use that for one of my CCC copies. Super fast, always nice having a bootable copy laying around just in case I need it.

I bought a Canon lens from B&H, and one of two promo offers was a free 4TB Seagate portable hard drive. I use it to back my new iMac, and it works quite well. The backup app I use is CCC first, and TM second. The newer WD portable hard drives are of similar dimensions as the Seagate drives (I got both).

In addition to the portable hard drives, I have several 2TB-4TB SATA internal hard drives (don't have enclosures), and a "Pluggable" USB-3/SATA self powered dock. I use this setup to save my photos as follows: I plug the USB dock to the computer and the SATA hard drive to the dock, then turn it on. When done saving photos, I eject the hard drive (s), and stack it out of the way on top of the other hard drives. This is the cheapest way to have a bunch of hard drives, and no stress is placed on the computer's USB port power supply.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

TM is not for me, prefer cloning to two external SSDs.