MBA (2011) USB Powered HD?

Does the 2011 MBA play nice with USB bus powered external hard disks?

Recommendations for most reliable HD (1TB)?

Thanks

Mike

Generally, all Mac notebooks including the MBA can power a modern USB external hard drive through its ports. Some older model external USB hard drives have a tendency to load the port down causing intermittent operation or even stoppage.

Any good quality external hard drive should suffice. I use a variety of external hard drives with my machines including WD, iOmega, Seagate, and Hitachi.

Thank you for the info. I had been told that it would work out better if I got the Apple Super DVD drive rather than a generic one due to issues with the USB ports.I was concerned that the same issue might exist with regard to EHDs.

Regards

Mike

External HDD or external DVD

they are two entirely different animals. No need for the external DVD as you simply sync with your mac or windows machine wirelessly and use the other's drive.

As to external HDDs, I have the new MB Air and use an external HDD as my time machine every day with no problems at all. You received bad info.

wolfpuppies3 said:

As to external HDDs, I have the new MB Air and use an external HDD as my time machine every day with no problems at all. You received bad info.

Click to expand...

I don't see how anyone could use TimeMachine. My initial backup took a couple of hours which is what one might expect. However, the hourly backups take forever. I have a TimeMachine backup that has been finishing backup for the last 20 minutes. I'd like to turn the machine off, but I would like the backup to finish. By the time it finishes, it will be time for another hourly backup. TM is way too slow for me. Maybe I have a system problem?

SuperDuper runs just fine.

Mike

In reality, how useful are hourly backups? I never keep my TM drive attached until I'm ready to make a backup. Of course I'm disciplined enough to know when to make a backup. Most new users are not.

Keep in mind that TM will continue to make backups whether or not the drive is attached. The only way to stop that "new feature" is turn off automatic backups from the TM System Preference panel.

I just want to do what i do with other backup programs. Do a full backup and incremental backups on command. After so many incremental backups do another full backup. I do turn TM off. However, I did not catch it in time after the full backup and it started an hourly backup. Once it finished, finally, I turned off TM. The full backup was about 2 hours and the hourly one was over an hour. In contrast, I did an incremental SuperDuper backup today in less than 10 minutes.

I have been told that I need both. SD for system recovery (which I needed this morning thanks to CUPS-PDF; it worked quite well). And TM for individual files.

I do not need all the cr.. that TM does. I just need a simple full/incremental backup program that I can run on demand - one that is fast and quick. SD has a smart incremental backup feature, but I have not looked at how well it works for individual files since it is a clone oriented backup.

I guess I need to do some more research.

Thank you for your help.

Mike

You can restore individual files and folders from either a SuperDuper or CCC clone. Since both programs create incremental backups or clones, you'll always have the latest version of the file backed up.

I use both TM and CCC. TM backups are not bootable while CCC and SD are, however, when it comes to migrating data to a new drive or system, TM works very well.

What does TM give you for migrating data to a new drive that is not available with SSD/CC?

Thanks

Mike

@MikeV99 I understand there are some aspects of Time Machine backups you do not like. That's OK by me as long as you have a backup strategy.

You're right that the initial backup takes quite a bit of time (especially when done wirelessly). I will say though that if your subsequent backups are taking as long as you think something is wrong.

I have to agree with Slydude. My initial TM backup took some time but backups since then take only minutes. Even the hourly backup only take a few minutes. I use my computer at work and it's not like it sits idle. Quite a few changes, additions, file deletions additions etc. are on the computer and have to be backup up.

I don't backup at all at home because I don't do a lot of critical work at home so I wait until the next work day to reattach the TM hard drive. Still it only takes minutes to back up so it does sound like something may not be working properly.

I am backing up to a USB external drive. I don't expect it to be at the speed of light, but would like it to be faster than a snail's crawl. If I could get the incremental backups to be reasonably faster I would just do on demand backups with TM.

I have googled this issue and have found others complaining about TM's slowness. However, no real solution.

I am so new to the MAC world I am not sure what to do next. Maybe I should do a Lion Recovery and start with a fresh system? Does it wipe out everything or just rebuild system directories?

???

Mike

I don't think starting with a fresh system will do much for the speed issue.
I must admit I forgot but I am backing up using hard drives that utilize the Fire Wire 800 port. They are must faster than a USB. Like a lot faster. I use Seagate Go Flex drives that utilize FireWire. So we are really not talking apples to apples.

There are other mfg. that utilize the same faster fire wire. Seagate will also have Thunder Bolt drives soon as well and then backup will be even faster than Firewire.

If you can afford to get a Firewire drive that will solve your slow USB backups. I just noticed that you have a MacBook Air so I am not sure if that computer has the Firewire port or the Thunberbolt port??

No FireWire on MBA?

But it does have Thunderbolt right? I know it won't do much good now but i think in the near future you will be good to go using Thunderbolt.

I think if it were me I would use CCC (Or whatever your choice is.) and back up as often as you think is necessary to protect your data. I just don't think that doing a clean install of Lion will give you what you need in terms of speed. If this is the way you go then you will need to disable TM backup otherwise it will back up to your computer and use hard drive space waiting for the TM back up drive to be connected. You can disable this from happening and then just use the CCC backup. It is bootable but as stated perviously you lose the ability to migrate data to another system. But is that really the case since your computer is new??

My backup does occur via USB since it is on an external hard drive attached to a Time Capsule. My most recent backup completed while I was writing this post. Here are the relevant stats:

Time from start to finish 8 Minutes 45 seconds
Data backed up according to Time Machine: 263 MB

This backup was not actually an hourly backup. I did not realize till a few minutes before that Time Machine had been off since about 1:00 AM last night. So, in essence Time Machine backed up two hours of stuff from last night and all day today in less than nine minutes. I'll keep an eye out tomorrow and let you know how much time a regular hourly backup takes

I started to put this in an edit to the post above but decided it might need to be on its own.

@Mikev99 Take a look at how much data Machine wants to back up for a given hour. Certain types of files can cause a Time Machine backup to balloon unnecessarily. If you use virtualization software such as Parallels or Fusion for example Time machine backs up the entire virtual machine file every time the file is accessed no matter how small a change is made.

I finally had to do a Lion restore. Things are now working correctly.

Thanks all

Mike

MikeV99 said:

I finally had to do a Lion restore. Things are now working correctly.

Thanks all

Mike

Click to expand...

I'm glad to hear that. Bytes musta gone right when they shouda gone left. Go figure. I'm glad it's working for you now. Good luck and get a CCC or SuperDuper as well. It may just save your bacon.

Regards,

Pat

Time Machine only takes

a few minutes to update and it is seamless, in the background. That's backing up a pretty full 500 gig hard drive on my MB Pro, 256 gig SSD on my Air. I have been backing up religiously since the Commodore C64 days of the late 1970's and know the value of a good backup strategy. Time Machine is the best system I have seen to date.