What is a good back-up HD

[Phillips]

I have a late 2013 Mac Pro
3.5 ghz 6-core intel xeon E5
Has a SSD hard drive.
My current external back-up is old and slow and am looking for a new back-up HD.

What is a good brand? Prefer a usb drive and would like a SSD .

Current internal is 500 GB. What would be a good size?

Thanks

 

[krs]

For a back-up clone via SD or CCC I just use a USB spinner drive - I don't see any point using an SSD which is still roughly three times the price.
Size the same as the main drive.

But if you aretalking about Time Machine, you want a bigger drive and maybe then an SSD is more appropriate.

 

[IWT]

Time Machine, irrespective of the Operating System (OS) requires that you format the External Hard Drive (EHD), be it Spinner or SSD, as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).

As a general rule your EHD should be 1.5-2 times the capacity of your Mac's Internal Hard Drive.

If you are contemplating a cloned BU such as Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper! (SD!), then the requirements for an EHD are the same - 1.5-2 times the storage capacity of the Mac's Internal Hard Drive; but the format of the EHD depends on the Operating System of your Mac.

If it's macOS Mojave or later, then the cloning EHD should be formatted as APFS.

Hope that helps.

Ian

 

[RadDave]

Time Machine, irrespective of the Operating System (OS) requires that you format the External Hard Drive (EHD), be it Spinner or SSD, as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).

As a general rule your EHD should be 1.5-2 times the capacity of your Mac's Internal Hard Drive.

If you are contemplating a cloned BU such as Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper! (SD!), then the requirements for an EHD are the same - 1.5-2 times the storage capacity of the Mac's Internal Hard Drive; but the format of the EHD depends on the Operating System of your Mac.

If it's macOS Mojave or later, then the cloning EHD should be formatted as APFS........

@ Phillips - I'd have to agree w/ Ian - I own 3 Mac computers and do duplicate TM and CCC backups - I'm gradually switching over to external SSDs (they are small, easy to store, and prices are dropping) - about a third of my BU drives are the ones shown below. Get a drive that is 2x your internal SSD, especially for TM backups. AND to emphasize, any of these external HDs can die at any time, so I like duplicate backups, plus also like a TM and a cloned backup, so you'll need 4 drives for that machine if you want to consider my advice. Dave

.

 

[krs]

If you are contemplating a cloned BU such as Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper! (SD!), then the requirements for an EHD are the same - 1.5-2 times the storage capacity of the Mac's Internal Hard Drive;

Could you, or someone else, explain why the external hard drive for a clone needs to be any larger than the internal drive that is being cloned.
I currently use a 1 TB internal drive - when I run a backup, the clone is actually slightly smaller than the original because not every file is copied.
But based on other recommendations in this forum and elsewhere, the internal drive should have 15 to 20% free space - so when I'm at that limit and have used 800GB of the 1TB internal the recommendation is to use a 2TB external to back up 800GB?

PS: Time Machine is a different kettle of fish - for that a larger drive for backup makes sense.

 

[MacInWin]

@krs, one of the options in clones is to keep a copy of files that were deleted. CCC calls that a Safety Net. I don't know what the other cloners call it. But that starts to use up space so the backup need to be a bit larger than the source.

I will slightly amend the recommendation about drive sizes to say that the BU drive needs to be 1.5-2 times the USED space on the source drive, if that drive is pretty consistent. So if you have a 1TB internal drive that never gets over 300 GB used, you don't need a 2TB backup, just a 1tb should do. Just be aware that if you exceed the limit of the backup drive, you may have to seriously rethink your backups.

 

[Rod]

I have the Samsung T5 Portable SSD mentioned in post #4 above for a CCC clone of my internal HD and i'm very happy with that. It is caperble of booting my 500GB 2015 MBP almost as fast as the internal drive, speed is the really big advantage with the portable SSD.
I have a Transcend 1TB USB spinner for Time Machine backup of same, also very happy with that.

 

[krs]

one of the options in clones is to keep a copy of files that were deleted. CCC calls that a Safety Net.

I haven't used CCC for quite a while....but are you saying if I empty the trash, CCC has an option to recover these deleted files in the CCC clone?
That is really interesting!
I have been using SD for the last few years and never came across such an option, but then again I didn't look for something like that - I have to take a closer look next time I do a clone.

 

[MacInWin]

If Safety net is turned on, and if there is room on the destination clone, then yes, it is possible to recover files that have been deleted. Go to the Bombich site and search for Safety Net to read more.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

What is a good brand? Prefer a usb drive and would like a SSD .

Current internal is 500 GB. What would be a good size?

This drive is very highly regarded by folks in the know, it's a fast SSD that's barely more expensive that a similar rotating disk hard drive:

Oyen Digital U32 Shadow 1TB External SSD USB-C Portable Solid State Drive (USB 3.1 Gen 2)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086WNT2L9/?tag=macforums0e4-20
$139

 

[badshoehabit]

Seagate slimline portable (1TB) has served me well for a number of years.

 

[krs]

I just bought another 2TB Seagate USB 3.0 portable spinner for $69 Canadian.
Have a few of these and they work fine for my SD clone

 

[chscag]

I have two Samsung T5 SSD drives. They're USB-C, 3.1, and very fast. Samsung now has a newer version of the same portable drive, the T7. You can find them at Amazon and B&H in NY.

 

[Phillips]

Thank you for all the suggestions. I ordered a spinner and a SSD and will now double my back-ups