Portable Hard Drive for Time Machine

Marc

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My External hard drive that I use for Time Machine has gone pop so I need a replacement. The old one (and it was old) was a Seagate 320GB which plugged into the mains but I was thinking of replacing it with a portable hard drive, would there be any potential issues with this?

Any recommendations? It doesn't have to have capacity of more than 500GB. Also, would there be any problems using a USB 3.0 one with an 8 year old iMac?

Ta
 
Usb is backwards compatible so no problems there. I have a number of Western digital passport drives and one is a backup for my Macbook so don't think there would be any problems.
 
avoid mypassport drives from WD.

most common failed drive ive experienced. the usb3 socket it soldered to the board too so no chance of breaking the drive out of the case and attempting recovery.
 
Avoid the Samsung/Maxtor M3 types - they're basically the same drive with the same soldered connector. I've had good experiences with Toshiba external drives, but only use the larger type with external power supply.

Alternatively buy a separate drive & caddy, so that you can easily swap drives if needed.
 
why only 500gb ??? I think that may be false economy as a 1, 2 or 3 Tb drive is pennies now compared to a couple of year ago. My Time Machine Drive is a 3Tb Seagate, had it a couple of year now and it was damned expensive at the time.

If I was you I would just get a mains drive and leave it on your desk, plug the Mac in once a week and let it do its thing.
 
why only 500gb ??? I think that may be false economy as a 1, 2 or 3 Tb drive is pennies now compared to a couple of year ago. My Time Machine Drive is a 3Tb Seagate, had it a couple of year now and it was damned expensive at the time.

The maximum the back up will ever be is 350GB, why would I need any bigger than 500GB?

If I was you I would just get a mains drive and leave it on your desk, plug the Mac in once a week and let it do its thing.

What is the advantage of a mains drive over a portable one?
 
The maximum the back up will ever be is 350GB, why would I need any bigger than 500GB?



What is the advantage of a mains drive over a portable one?

when you say 350gb I presume that is the size of your internal hard drive, Time machine over a period of time will fill a drive, even greater than your 350gb as it will write all modified files from you 350gb over the coming weeks/months.

If you use your mac a lot, files will change, images copied and adjusted and so on. When the Time Machine is full the OS will remove the old files to make way for the more recent ones. So, in effect if you want something restored from say a year ago it could have been removed.

A quick Google shows the 1Tb drives are practically the same price as a 500gb one, storage space has never been so cheap so why not take advantage of it.

I prefer a Desktop Hard disk for my time machine as it doesn't move, it just sits there doing its thing when switched on, whereas a portable is getting plugged in and out, moved around, put away and so on, its just that I think a Desktop is more safe.
 
when you say 350gb I presume that is the size of your internal hard drive, Time machine over a period of time will fill a drive, even greater than your 350gb as it will write all modified files from you 350gb over the coming weeks/months.

If you use your mac a lot, files will change, images copied and adjusted and so on. When the Time Machine is full the OS will remove the old files to make way for the more recent ones. So, in effect if you want something restored from say a year ago it could have been removed.

A quick Google shows the 1Tb drives are practically the same price as a 500gb one, storage space has never been so cheap so why not take advantage of it.

My old drive was 320GB. I really can't see myself wanting anything from a year ago (or even close to that). My Mac is 8 years old, Im really only concerned with backup in case the Mac itself fails in which case I'd only need the last back up.

Just out of interest, what sort of thing would you need to restore from a year ago?

I prefer a Desktop Hard disk for my time machine as it doesn't move, it just sits there doing its thing when switched on, whereas a portable is getting plugged in and out, moved around, put away and so on, its just that I think a Desktop is more safe.

I've no plans to plug/unplug a portable drive, it would sit there plugged into the iMac as a mains drive would be. The main advantage for me would be less space taken up, one less cable and one less plug socket used up.
 
My old drive was 320GB. I really can't see myself wanting anything from a year ago (or even close to that). My Mac is 8 years old, Im really only concerned with backup in case the Mac itself fails in which case I'd only need the last back up.

Just out of interest, what sort of thing would you need to restore from a year ago?



I've no plans to plug/unplug a portable drive, it would sit there plugged into the iMac as a mains drive would be. The main advantage for me would be less space taken up, one less cable and one less plug socket used up.

to be honest I cannot recall looking for anything that far back, but the files will be there as my time machine is at least two year old, call me paranoid or whatever but I always look at the worst case scenario, my motto is "better to be safe than sorry" :D

I see your point about the portable drive, I didn't see the iMac bit at the end of your post :(
 
to be honest I cannot recall looking for anything that far back, but the files will be there as my time machine is at least two year old, call me paranoid or whatever but I always look at the worst case scenario, my motto is "better to be safe than sorry" :D

Nothing wrong with that. ;)

I see your point about the portable drive, I didn't see the iMac bit at the end of your post :(

Thought that might be the case.
 
Funny how some people have problems and some don't. But good advice if others have had problems.

Same with a lot of things like retailers. Plenty will rave about certain ones but there will always be those who have had problems.
 
I use a Mypassport drive. It stays plugged into my iMac all the time - Apple Timemachine does an hourly backup so it needs to be permanently attached.
 
The issue with the Mypassport/Samsung/Maxtor M3 drives is that they seem unusually fragile AND the usual trick of removing the drive from its casing doesn't work because the USB port is soldered directly to the drive, preventing it being placed in another caddy for continued use.
 
The maximum the back up will ever be is 350GB, why would I need any bigger than 500GB?
Apple recommend the time machine backup drive is 2-3 times the size of the computers hard drive. Time machine isn't a mirror copy of your hard drive as it backups every hour, day, week, month etc. In time the 'time machine' hard drive will be filled and stop backing up if it's too small. How fast this happens depends on on how full your computer hard drive and the size of the time machine hard drive. I have experienced the time machine drive filling up and stop backing up.

Im really only concerned with backup in case the Mac itself fails in which case I'd only need the last back up.

If it's only backup you are thinking of have a look at carbon copy cloner.
 
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Apple recommend the time machine backup drive is 2-3 times the size of the computers hard drive. Time machine isn't a mirror copy of your hard drive as it backups every hour, day, week, month etc. In time the 'time machine' hard drive will be filled and stop backing up if it's too small. How fast this happens depends on on how full your computer hard drive and the size of the time machine hard drive. I have experienced the time machine drive filling up and stop backing up.

Then I'd need a 2TB hard drive but, as I said, I've been using a 320GB drive for the past 8 years without any problems.

If it's only backup you are thinking of have a look at carbon copy cloner

Thanks, I'll have a look at that.
 
Then I'd need a 2TB hard drive but, as I said, I've been using a 320GB drive for the past 8 years without any problems.

It depends on how full your computer hard drive is. I had the problem once my internal mac drive was around 80% full. If your computer hard drive is only 10-20% full then it would take a long time to become a problem.
 
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It depends on how full your computer hard drive is. I had the problem once my internal mac drive was around 80% full. If your computer hard drive is only 10-20% full then it would take a long time to become a problem.

My Mac hard drive has a capacity of 650GB. 300GB is currently used so still 350GB free (46% full). I do need to have a bit of a clear out as I think there is a lot of crap that could be deleted.
 
My Mac hard drive has a capacity of 650GB. 300GB is currently used so still 350GB free (46% full). I do need to have a bit of a clear out as I think there is a lot of crap that could be deleted.

Delete it before you connect the new drive - otherwise you'll stil have it.
 
Back up's been running for 3 1/2 hours. It's done 58GB out of 235GB, is that normal for a first backup?
 
If your Mac supports Power Nap then you can set it to sleep instead of leaving it on and it'll still back-up to Time Machine whilst saving energy.

Sadly not, my Mac is in its autumnal years and not laden with such modern technologies.
 
I use Caffeine on my MacBook. It displays a coffee cup in your top bar. When you enable it, the Mac won't go to sleep so the backup will keep running.

My Mac only goes to sleep when I tell it to so wasn't a problem. It finished at 10.50 this morning and is happily backing up every hour. :)
 
I use a Mypassport drive. It stays plugged into my iMac all the time - Apple Timemachine does an hourly backup so it needs to be permanently attached.

that is a fabuous solution when a thief invades your home or a fire.
 
that is a fabuous solution when a thief invades your home or a fire.
That's true, but the chances of either are fairly small - most houses never burn down. Hard drives fail - that is not a probability, it is definite, so that is what I deal with.
 
I use a 2TB Linkstation NAS for time machine, its tucked away in another room with my other NAS drives so theres no issue with it taking up space, it and my other 3 NAS drives are connected to a Netgear switch which is then connected to my router via cat 7 cable another of which connects my MBP to the router as well so no speed issues etc.
 
Apple recommend the time machine backup drive is 2-3 times the size of the computers hard drive. Time machine isn't a mirror copy of your hard drive as it backups every hour, day, week, month etc. In time the 'time machine' hard drive will be filled and stop backing up if it's too small. How fast this happens depends on on how full your computer hard drive and the size of the time machine hard drive. I have experienced the time machine drive filling up and stop backing up.

This isn't quite right - Time Machine will store as much as the backup drive will hold. When it runs out of space, older backups are discarded to make room for the newer ones. This provides a sliding "window" of backups.
The bigger the ratio between backup and internal drive, the larger the window.

Time Machine also maximises storage by keeping one physical copy of each file regardless of how long it's been on the internal drive. Initial backups can take several hours or longer over a network, subsequent ones can be very small/quick.
 
This isn't quite right - Time Machine will store as much as the backup drive will hold. When it runs out of space, older backups are discarded to make room for the newer ones. This provides a sliding "window" of backups.
The bigger the ratio between backup and internal drive, the larger the window.

Time Machine also maximises storage by keeping one physical copy of each file regardless of how long it's been on the internal drive. Initial backups can take several hours or longer over a network, subsequent ones can be very small/quick.
If that's the case I need to find out why mine didnt discard the older files as it stopped backing up and came up with an error message saying time machine full.
 
A suggestion to consider moving to cloud provided alternatives instead. e.g. Google Drive or Dropbox Plus. I ditched my Time Machine about 2yrs back and have not looked back. A lot less hassle with the added bonus of off-site storage (e.g. fire) and access from other devices / locations.
 
Thread resurrection please.

I took delivery today of a seagate external 2TB hard drive for my 5 year old Mac book pro (500GB hard drive) to start to do proper back ups of my photos (raw files etc)

I'm not sure whether it would be best to utilise it through time machine or just as a manual stand alone external drive

Am I right in assuming time machine would replicate everything on my laptop both good and bad ?

Many thanks.
 
Thread resurrection please.

I took delivery today of a seagate external 2TB hard drive for my 5 year old Mac book pro (500GB hard drive) to start to do proper back ups of my photos (raw files etc)

I'm not sure whether it would be best to utilise it through time machine or just as a manual stand alone external drive

Am I right in assuming time machine would replicate everything on my laptop both good and bad ?

Many thanks.

Yes, and it does incremental backups, so that after doing the first BU it only stores new and changed files.
 
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