Begin by selecting an external drive that is sufficiently large to hold your backup images — I recommend three times your disk space used, at a minimum, though larger is always better. Click on the Use Disk button once you locate your external hard drive and your MacBook. Once in the Time Machine box, click on Select Backup Disc to choose your external hard drive as the device to store the backup. To do this go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of your screen then click on System Preferences and then on Time Machine.Connect the WD My Passport to another Mac or Windows PC, which will find out if it is the incompatible file system of the drive that makes this WD My Passport undetectable. Through the use of Time Machine and an external hard drive, we. Backing up your Mac on a regular basis is one of the best things you can do. External drive capacityHow to Backup a Mac to an External Hard Drive in 2021. Opinions and quality change often, so make sure to pay attention to the dates of specific recommendations you find. SSDs are not worth the expense to be used as external drives, though they otherwise could be.
He already backed up his computer to an external hard drive, specifically a 2 TB WD My Passport for my Mac. Being that he uses a Mac, I suggested to him to use Time Machine. Bigger is better.A friend came to me today looking to wipe his computer clean and reinstall everything from a backup. For Mac computers, go to the Apple menu and select Software Update.It’s pretty easy to say you can never have too much capacity. If you want extra safety and breathing room, double (or even triple) my recommendation.The good news here is that in most cases, your backup requirements — even after tripling my recommendation — will likely be smaller than the average external hard drive currently available. That would be enough to hold two complete and compressed full-image backups, along with overhead information (such as recovery partitions) and a healthy collection of incremental backups as well.As I said, that’s a bare minimum, and there are certainly situations where it could end up not being enough, depending on how you configure your backups. (Screenshot: askleo.com)For that machine, I would purchase a hard drive with a capacity of at least three times 478GB, or around 1.5TB (1434GB, rounded up). Cons: Physical damage.Of course, more capacity also means a more expensive drive.The rule of thumb I use is this: get an external drive at least three times as large as the amount of data you expect to back up.For example, my primary Windows machine has a roughly 922GB (gigabyte) drive, of which around 478GB are used. Pros: Storage capacity, price point. SSDIn my opinion, SSDs, or Solid State Disks (which use high-quality flash memory instead of rotating magnetic platters), aren’t appropriate for backup purposes. If your computer doesn’t support USB3, that’s okay it’s backwards compatible, and will operate at the slower USB2 speed.Someday, when you get a new computer, it will likely have a USB3 interface, and you’ll have an external drive ready to take advantage of it. USB3There’s simply no reason not to ensure your new drive comes with a USB3 interface, even if your computer doesn’t support it.If your computer does support USB3 (usually indicated by the plastic in the USB connector being blue), backups will be faster. Some choices are easy some depend at least a little on your personal setup. ![]() No additional connection: the drive is powered entirely by the USB interface.USB-powered drives are typically smaller, more portable, and slower. PowerThere are two approaches to powering an external drive. I just wouldn’t recommend it. Mavis beacon download for macOther characteristicsPhysical size: if you care, you can narrow your selection based on physical drive size — for example, a 2.5-inch drive versus a 3.5 — but in the long run, that choice will probably be made for you based on the choices you made above, since USB-powered portable drives are generally small and drives with external power will be physically larger.Rotation speed: I never pay attention to this for external drives, particularly back-up drives. Backup drives attached to my desktop machines are typically externally powered. The backup drive for my laptop is small, portable, and great for travel. With that in mind, here are a couple of drives I recommend today — where “today” is September, 2021. Specifics: what external drive to getAs I said, drives change constantly. If you’re on USB2, the speed of a faster drive is wasted. It’s the backup drive connected to my primary desktop machine and holds my nightly Macrium Reflect backups, among a few other things. Based on prior experience with this brand, this is a drive I actually did purchase in 2019. The maximum capacity is difficult to resist.Choose what your budget will allow, as long as it meets the minimum capacity requirements I laid out earlier.Externally powered #2: G-Technology 6TB G-DRIVE USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I’ve not needed to purchase one recently, as my previous purchases were always of the largest capacity available at the time.Externally powered: Western Digital My Book Desktop External Hard Drive.These are available in capacities from 3 to 28TB.Again, if I needed an external drive, this is the one I’d probably buy. Were I to buy one, I’d probably opt for the largest, simply because you can never have enough disk space. They’re available in different capacities from 1 to 5TB (terabyte — that’s a thousand gigabytes). More detailed information.Hard disks are a very difficult category of product to recommend. Affiliate links help pay the bills and support Ask Leo!. Without affecting the price you pay, or my decision to include them, using affiliate links may result in my being paid a commission should you purchase the product mentioned. The reviews indicated that it used a proprietary back up software that could be problematic in case of failure. My philosophy is to get as high a quality as possible, because the cost to make good in the case of a failure would far outweigh the few bucks difference for a lower quality item (sort of like insurance).At the time of purchase I looked at a WD 3TB external “back up” drive. Some of the reviews for this model said it was noisy, but I have not found that to be the case at all – you have to listen very carefully to detect a quiet hum. It is used solely for back up and accordingly it operates all the time. I do regular backups (my preference is robocopy) to drive-A once a week (more often if I have critical files on my laptop). My backup strategy consists of two external 2-terabyte drives. Hardware eventually fails. As Leo has repeatedly stated, no drive lasts forever. I took Leo’s advise for back up procedures – so far, so good! ReplyIf you have only one external drive as your backup then you don’t really have a backup. Backup Book Pro Onto Wd My Passport Manual That CameYou’d be pretty upset, and justifiably so, if the new car got only 90 mpg. Imagine your current car getting 40 mpg and the salesman promises you that your new car will get “up to” 400 mpg. After upgrading the BIOS (something I shouldn’t have had to do on a new laptop) I maxed out at 100MB/s so don’t count on the advertised blinding speed improvement. In reality, using a USB 3.0 drive (results on a regular as well as SSD were the same) yielded 60MB/s. The manual that came with the computer indicated USB 2.0 speeds of up to (sales speak for “actual mileage may vary”) 60MB/s, and up to 600MB/s for USB 3.0. Other than a catastrophe such as a fire, I can’t imagine losing both external drives at the same time.Regarding USB 3.0 – My new laptop (purchased late December 2014) came with a USB 3.0 port.
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