What brand external hard drive for mac time machine backup?

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to consolidate a few old computers, and my old one is too small.

I tried a WD one but it's absurd. Asks me to download a bunch of things, install a bunch of programs, etc. And I still can't get it to work.

What is the simplest, most ready-to-go 2tb external hard drive for macs? That doesn't require me to do anything but plug it in?

[Anonymous]

If there is a compatibility issue with the older one, you might want to use flash drives to backup, then you could transfer info to the newer HD's or computers.

[Anonymous]

How important is your data to you? Having one single point of failure for your backup isn’t ideal. You really want one on site and one off site (cloud) for your backups but I doubt most people do this. Maybe at a minimum look at NAS devices. You can get ones with multiple hard drives. Certainly not plug and play easy but also not terribly difficult. Check out Synology drives.

[Anonymous]

DP. Synology is too pricey for me. I went with a LaCie external drive for my Mac backup. Bought it online someplace.

[Anonymous]

Whatever you do, avoid "clouds".

[Anonymous]

As noted above, you need multiple backups, with at least one stored off-site. Get two different brands/models of hard disks to minimize the risk of simultaneous failure. The exact brand/model doesn't matter, but be sure to get a model that uses CMR (conventional magnetic recording) and not SMR (shingled magnetic recording). SMR drives are fine for write-once applications, but subsequent writes and over-writes will be very slow. Don't use flash drives--they aren't shelf-stable (neither are mechanical hard disks, but they are better.

[Anonymous]

Time machine backups are not full backups. Ask me how I know.

You should be using Hard Drive cloning software like Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable backup drive. I use an external LaCie HD with CCCloner. Make 2 backups and keep one offsite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever you do, avoid "clouds".

"Clouds" are far more reliable than a local device.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whatever you do, avoid "clouds".

"Clouds" are far more reliable than a local device.

Yeah ummm, you know that's not the issue here.