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Which external drive for backup?

Even a USB HDD would suffice for backing up, only the initial backup might take longer though, but any subsequent backup is quite small and will not take that long.

Unless you really need the FW80 speeds, USB is fast enough for using Time Machine and you are paying for the FW chipsets which adds quite a lot of money. You can get 1TB USB HDDs for less than 100€ nowadays.
 
I agree with others about the overkill aspect of that drive for backups. I've got one (1.5TB) as a data storage drive on my Mac mini server, but I've got an inexpensive Seagate 1.5TB I picked up at Costco for TimeMachine backups (it does 4 systems), a 1TB FW400 OWC Mercury Elite AL Pro to do scheduled back up of the server (saves $40 over FW800), and a "toaster" with bare drives to back up the external data drive, TimeMachine drive, and any other tasks.

Considering that one really needs multiple backups, the toaster+bare drive approach saves money and minimizes storage space.
 

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For my iMac, I use a Western Digital 1tb green drive housed in a Macally aluminium USB enclosure. It's not a fast drive, but it's perfect for time machine backups. What I like about it besides looking nice, it runs silent and cool, plus it's energy efficient. I paid $59.99 for the drive from newegg.com. The Macally enclosure cost about $32 from Amazon.

f5c74a53.jpg
 
Thanks everyone, your replies have been very helpful. I'm gonna go with 1 or 2.0TB USB unit, since I don't need the extra speed of a FW port.
 
Mr. McMac said:
For my iMac, I use a Western Digital 1tb green drive housed in a Macally aluminium USB enclosure. It's not a fast drive, but it's perfect for time machine backups. What I like about it besides looking nice, it runs silent and cool, plus it's energy efficient. I paid $59.99 for the drive from newegg.com. The Macally enclosure cost about $32 from Amazon.

f5c74a53.jpg
Click to expand...

the enclosure, i like and taking it into consideration when buying a enclosure soon.

thanks for the info.
 
So McMac, I assume that's a 'bare bones' drive; do you tighten it into the enclosure somehow then plug it in? And I guess if your hard drive dies you could have set this up to be a bootable one & take the dead drive out, replacing it with the external one? Excuse my newness with external drives.
 
Twin B said:
And I guess if your hard drive dies you could have set this up to be a bootable one & take the dead drive out, replacing it with the external one?
Click to expand...
FWIW one of the nice features about Macs is that they don't need these shenanigans to boot. You can clone your internal drive to an external and boot from the external without ever opening the Mac's case.

B
 
Well that's a relief to hear. After decades of Windows use I'm not accustomed to things being easy to accomplish. I was on a Win forum the other day discussing a problem with my grandkids' machine & reading all the issues people have with them makes me happy to sit down in front of my iMac. Thanks B.
 
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