Hello
I just bought a new MacBook Pro. It has 512 GB disk space.
I'd like to buy a external hard disk drive for back-up and use Time Machine.
I have few questions:
1. Which one would you recommend?
2. Shall I get 512 GB or 1 TB?
3. Shall I get a SSD one (like the Samsung T5) or a HDD one?
4. Which file format is recommended and what recommendation do you have when using Time Machine?
5. If my back-up is only 200 GB, can I use 300 GB remaining to back-up other files, like documents?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Sorry that this won't exactly follow the sequence of your questions, but I hope it'll be useful.
First off, to be safe, you'll need about 2x to 3x the size of what you'll be backing up, based on how the various backups do their job. So, no, 512 GB to backup 512 GB won't do. Think more like 1.5 GB, 2 GB, etc. More on that down the line.
SSD is nice but unnecessary for backups. The first time through, you'd notice the speed, but not with the incrementals; and a regular HDD is 'waaaay cheaper. Plus, as you'll see, you need more than one to be safe.
Here is my use case . . .
For my iMac, I bought two separate Seagate Backup Plus Hubs. My iMac has a 1 TB SSD and, at the time, Amazon had a sale going on 4 TB models of those drives, so I got two. One is dedicated to Time Machine backups and the other is dedicated to Carbon Copy Cloner backups. Then, for online backup, I use Arq and Backblaze B2. This setup thus meets the so-called "3-2-1" requirement (
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/):
A 3-2-1 strategy means having at least 3 total copies of your data, 2 of which are local but on different mediums (read: devices), and at least 1 copy offsite.
(in my case, the latter means Arq-to-Backblaze B2).
I also have data sync'd to iCloud, Dropbox, and the OneDrive setup that I got for "free" as part of Office 365,
but never confuse sync with backup. A sync with a bad drive, or accidentally cleared folder, or whatever is exactly the kind of situation from which a true backup will give you a chance to recover; having multiple backups just helps that even more.
Now, re the "How big a drive do I need?" thing again: I did a "Get Info" on each of my external drives this weekend and noticed that each had well over 1.5 TB in use, although my iMac's 1 TB SSD currently has many hundreds of GB free. That's what I meant earlier about how the backup methods do their work, especially in Time Machine's case since it keeps so many versions of your data. (The ideal method, I'm sure, is one of those Synology or other NAS devices loaded to the gills with big ol' HDDs and all that RAID goodness, but I haven't gone that route yet. Maybe next year. For now, I find multiple small external HDDs sufficient.)
When I get a MBP with a 1 TB SSD in the near future, I plan to duplicate the process with two additional external drives and, yeah, probably the same model or very similar. Of course, the MBP won't be constantly connected to the external drives because I'll be taking it to work and back, but that simply means timing the TM and CCC backups to make sure they occur when I'm sure to be home with the MBP connected to the drives. Since I'm always on high-speed Internet and thus always have the Arq-to-Backblaze part workable if all else fails, it's not a problem for me. In my case, the MBP will be going only home-to-work-to-home, not "really" traveling, so obviously YMMV. I've read that some pro photographers, for example, carry little external HDDs around with the rest of their gear for just this purpose; if that fits your scenario, you might want to think about that.
Note: Yes, you'll need a way to go from the likely USB-A connectors on the drives to the USB-C ports on your MBP, so don't forget about that little nicety. I'd suggest picking one of the numerous excellent mini-docks out there for that sort of thing, since it'll come in handy otherwise, anyway. I'm personally planning on getting this one (
https://satechi.net/products/aluminum-type-c-pro-hub-adapter-with-ethernet), but you'll want to pick the one that best meets your needs, vendor choices, etc.
As for splitting the drive (your question #5): when I suggested that once in a thread (which is about Arq in particular but has a lot of good info about backups in general:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/arq.2017935/), it was pointed out to me by someone much smarter than I about this stuff that, yes, you can do that, but all components fail sooner or later and you'd therefore be taking multiple backups down at the same time. If you keep Backup Method A on one drive and Backup Method B on the other, you're safer because it's highly unlikely
both would die at the same time. (If so, your problems are probably much bigger than data loss.)
HTH. Sorry for the length of the answer.
