Apple time capsule?

Phil White

Phil White

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Is there any real benefit of using one of these over an external USB hard drive?

My iMac fusion (3tb) drive is getting pretty full now and I want to back up all my photos.
 
Non whatsoever, get a USB 3 or preferably a Thunderbolt drive... BTW you should be backing up your images on a regular basis, if you only have them on one drive and that goes belly up...
 
Phil White said:
Is there any real benefit of using one of these over an external USB hard drive?

My iMac fusion (3tb) drive is getting pretty full now and I want to back up all my photos.
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Is also worth checking out online providers too as they will have full raid and backups, I made the mistake of reloading my machine and not restoring photos from backup media drive and disk failed on it a few weeks after my reload so lost the lot :(
 
If looking at thunderbolt for backup depending on the disk type there may no be a speed benefit over USB (and USB is cheaper too). If the backup is using a standard hard drive the speed of USB3 and thunderbolt will likely be limited by the hard drive transfer speed. You need a specialist drive that's uses some kind of RAID to improve the speed if they are hard drives and not SSD.

Last year after my internal mac hard dive (1tb) was getting full I moved my photos onto an external powered hard drive. I have another onsite powered hard drive that copies the data from the master drive as the onsite backup. I then use two portable WD hard drives that are a off site back ups (one is always off site as the other is taken offsite to be swapped and one brought home). All of the backups are automated using Carbon Copy Cloner (the backups run each time the computer is on and the external hard drives are connected). I previously ran a backup on a scheduled time but the external hard drives need to on so I can't do this now, running a backup every time the computer is turned on is the next best thing.

Like me Adam says online providers are useful but it depends on your internet speed. Mine is awful so I've given that up ad an option.
 
Biggest advantage of Time Capsule is that you can put it somewhere away from your computer. If someone steals the machine, they might not see/steal the TC.

As others have pointed out, you need to ensure your photos are stored in at least 2 places - moving them to an external drive of any kind is not a backup unless you have a copy elsewhere.
 
Recommended (minimum) backup is often referred to as a 3-2-1 backup.

3 copies of your data
On 2 devices
With 1 off site.
 
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