Time Machine USB 2 or 3?

[Mike-G]

I feel like this is going to be a question that has been asked a lot, but I haven't been able to find an answer.

I have been using a USB 3, 2.5" external drive as a time machine drive for several years, but the drive failed last week. I want to change to a larger capacity, 3.5" external drive, but here lies the USB 2 or USB 3 question. I have a spare USB 2 external hard drive, which will need a new power supply at sub £15. Or I could buy a new USB 3 external hard drive for roughly £50. Does time machine benefit enough from USB 3 after the initial, big backup, to be worth over triple the cost for me?

I don't deal with a large quantity of files, or even very big files and only really rely on time machine for peace of mind, in case of SSD failure. All my important stuff is backed up offsite and I use iCloud storage for a lot of my non-sensitive files.

Thanks in advance.

 

[techwarrior]

The ongoing backup task is a behind the scenes thing, so probably not a significant benefit here. Initial backup and restore tasks take quite a bit of time, but are done very rarely. USB3 would presumably cut restore times considerably, but if you only do that once every three years, is it really all that critical?

The real day to day benefits of USB3 are realized when you have large files stored externally and want them to load and save quickly.

So, save your money for something more important.