Time Machine hardware question

[spiderman0616]

Hi all--

I have a Sandisk 500 GB external drive I use for Time Machine exclusively. I have been using it since the day the M1 MacBook Air came out for all my backups, and also used it to transfer from the Air over to my M1 Pro MBP. Currently it only has 42 GB remaining free, and is becoming very slow to connect and become available when I plug it into my laptop. It still eventually mounts and is able to run backups, but last time I did notice it had to free up space first. So I have a few things I'm wondering about this:

1) Would it be worth it to throw money at the problem? There's a 2 TB model that's on sale today that I could easily grab and just not worry about this anymore.

2) If I throw money at the problem, won't this same thing happen again when the 2 TB drive fills up?

3) In light of 1 and 2, wouldn't it be wiser to just wipe the one I have and start over? I don't necessarily need all those old backups--they're just a nice-to-have.

Any anecdotal advice is welcome.

Thanks!

 

[bobcomer]

It all depends on what you want in your backups! Pure disaster recovery, buy another drive and start new and store the old one. 2 redundant backups can get you out of a bad situation. (one old and saved, one new)

File recovery, buy something even bigger.

Do like me, buy a big NAS and a backup drive for it. (My NAS is 20TB and the backup drive is that big as well, and believe it or not, I have a 2nd NAS)

I'm an IT guy, we learn redundancy is a good thing early in our careers.

 

[Mr. Bear]

Why use an SSD? Buy two 2Tb HDD s for the price of the Sandisk SSD and you have redundancy.

when the Time Machine drive is full, it has to remove old backups to clear space, and that does take more time.

also, your backup drive should be at least 2x your storage

 

[spiderman0616]

It all depends on what you want in your backups! Pure disaster recovery, buy another drive and start new and store the old one. 2 redundant backups can get you out of a bad situation. (one old and saved, one new)

File recovery, buy something even bigger.

Do like me, buy a big NAS and a backup drive for it. (My NAS is 20TB and the backup drive is that big as well, and believe it or not, I have a 2nd NAS)

I'm an IT guy, we learn redundancy is a good thing early in our careers.

Why use an SSD? Buy two 2Tb HDD s for the price of the Sandisk SSD and you have redundancy.

when the Time Machine drive is full, it has to remove old backups to clear space, and that does take more time.

also, your backup drive should be at least 2x your storage

Thank you both--useful advice.

I decided to buy a 2 TB SanDisk SSD and will keep my 500 GB archived for now. I realize that SSDs are more cost prohibitive, but I do like these little portable drives a lot just for their flexibility. (Also, I ruined my last HDD external drive by clumsily knocking it over while cleaning, and I'm not even a clumsy person usually.)

I definitely agree with the "have redundancy" advice too. You both may scoff at this, but I think of iCloud and OneDrive as my personal and work redundancies respectively. They may not have a full machine restore for my Macs, but at least they have all my important documents. I think of my Time Machine drives as rescue/restore disks in a pinch, and they have definitely come in handy once or twice in a pinch before.

 

[bobcomer]

I definitely agree with the "have redundancy" advice too. You both may scoff at this, but I think of iCloud and OneDrive as my personal and work redundancies respectively. They may not have a full machine restore for my Macs, but at least they have all my important documents. I think of my Time Machine drives as rescue/restore disks in a pinch, and they have definitely come in handy once or twice in a pinch before.

No scoffing from me! For critical files, it's a great way to do things I'd just need to much, so I really don't take advantage of it.

I agree with SSD's as well, but once you get over 2TB, it just gets too expensive, but I keep hoping prices will eventually come down a lot! Spinning drives do work a long time as long as they're on all the time...