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iMac Backup

willmtaylor

willmtaylor

macrumors G4
Original poster
Oct 31, 2009
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Which external backup drive do you all suggest for a 2017 18,3 iMac?

Does having an SSD vs. HDD make much difference in this scenario? Which do you suggest and why?

I have a 2TB Time Capsule with Time Machine turned on, so that's backed up regularly. However, I keep an off-site backup drive at my office and bring it home once a month or so to backup. (This iMac has all of our household financial documents, family photos, etc.)

TIA!
Will
 
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willmtaylor said:
Which external backup drive do you all suggest for a 2017 18,3 iMac?

Does having an SSD vs. HDD make much difference in this scenario? Which do you suggest and why?

I have a 2TB Time Capsule with Time Machine turned on, so that's backed up regularly. However, I keep an off-site backup drive at my office and bring it home once a month or so to backup. (This iMac has all of our household financial documents, family photos, etc.)

TIA!
Will
Click to expand...

IMO, don't waste your money on an SSD for backup purposes... You can get a WD or Seagate portable 2.5" drive in sufficient size very inexpensively... I have two 2 TB drives that I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create weekly backups that I rotate to an offsite location. The drives were less that $100 each, and work perfectly. I run the backups over night, so speed is not critically important. Sometimes the most obvious solution is the best solution.
 
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dwfaust said:
IMO, don't waste your money on an SSD for backup purposes... You can get a WD or Seagate portable 2.5" drive in sufficient size very inexpensively... I have two 2 TB drives that I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create weekly backups that I rotate to an offsite location. The drives were less that $100 each, and work perfectly. I run the backups over night, so speed is not critically important. Sometimes the most obvious solution is the best solution.
Click to expand...
I agree with everything @dwfaust said here. Drives are pretty much a commodity any more, so just get whatever USB3 drive you can find on sale in the size you need. I also use TM to one disk and CCC to another once a week. I also backup my home folder online using Arq app to BackBlaze B2 servers.

There was a post here a couple days ago where someone bought an SSD for TM backups and it made little difference. I think all the churning around TM does at each backup is what takes so long, and a faster drive does not matter much.

I do use a SSD for the CCC clones and that is very fast.
 
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Weaselboy said:
I agree with everything @dwfaust said here. Drives are pretty much a commodity any more, so just get whatever USB3 drive you can find on sale in the size you need. I also use TM to one disk and CCC to another once a week. I also backup my home folder online using Arq app to BackBlaze B2 servers.

There was a post here a couple days ago where someone bought an SSD for TM backups and it made little difference. I think all the churning around TM does at each backup is what takes so long, and a faster drive does not matter much.

I do use a SSD for the CCC clones and that is very fast.
Click to expand...
Thanks!
 
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