1st time on a mac (former Windows): Help me pick external storage and understand back up procedure please?

[precision01]

Your question should make apple ashamed by selling soldered RAM and SSD machines, with overpriced ram and storage upgrade options.

 

[pacmania1982]

My solution is rudimentary but simple. I have an M2 Mac mini that I have two Samsung T7 1TB SSDs. They're only USB, not thunderbolt - but what speed or version I could not tell you as the USB naming convention has turned into a mess.

I have my OS and apps on the internal 256GB of storage and then on one of the drives I have my movie library/software on one of the Samsung drives. This all then gets backed up automatically to the other 1TB SSD via Time Machine.

You sound like you don't have/want a complex solution and you need not have one.

 

[MacBH928]

Backups do not need to be complicated, and can be set and forget for the most part. Lots of good stuff here, with lots of reading. The basics I think is having 2 backups, one local and one offsite. My simple setup is a Time Machine backup which is great for work with hourly backups and super easy restore of your whole system or individual files if and when needed.

2nd backup I use is an offsite cloud backup. I use BackBlaze. I have no affiliation with them, just a content user. This runs in the background and has unlimited backup storage. This backs up the entire computer, as well as external drives if you select them to backup as well. First backup can take a while as it is. uploading everything to the cloud, but after that you don't even notice that it is running.

www.backblaze.com

the backblaze option is nice but I have privacy concerns trusting closed source apps to backup my whole HDD. Those tech companies are not to be trusted with data.

 

[hobowankenobi]

I just learned that ProtonDrive client is FOSS and does encryption on device before sending it to the cloud, so I guess you can trust that. Don't know about the iOS app though.

Yep, Proton looks good. Not fully free as the client only works with their storage...same as all nearly all cloud clients.

Similar feature set as Mega...but Proton storage costs are much higher, and their free tier is smaller. Mega also supports MFA, and does have public access to code for inspection and audits.

I would be comfortable with both. Mega costs much less, so I have stuck with them.

 

[wonderings]

the backblaze option is nice but I have privacy concerns trusting closed source apps to backup my whole HDD. Those tech companies are not to be trusted with data.

Not something I am concerned with. If it did come out that they were going through peoples data the whole business would be done in a heart beat. They make their money based on what they off, and security and privacy is part of it.

 

[MacBH928]

Yep, Proton looks good. Not fully free as the client only works with their storage...same as all nearly all cloud clients.

Similar feature set as Mega...but Proton storage costs are much higher, and their free tier is smaller. Mega also supports MFA, and does have public access to code for inspection and audits.

I would be comfortable with both. Mega costs much less, so I have stuck with them.

Looks like Mega has a foss client as well.

Not something I am concerned with. If it did come out that they were going through peoples data the whole business would be done in a heart beat. They make their money based on what they off, and security and privacy is part of it.

idk, I heard too many stories about corporates having they "keys" and giving away your information at government request.

I have low threat level but I do not want any one to browse my files be it the government or someone else.