My current Time Machine drive connected to my iMac has died (my second one to die in 6 years, first one WD, second one Seagate). Ironically, so far it's been my TM drives that need replacing, as opposed to me ever needing to use TM for a failed Mac. Is there any reason to buy a a WD/Seagate external drive instead of buying an internal HD and putting it in a cheap enclosure other than price? Pre-configured externals tend to have software pre-installed, and strange firmwares installed (like parking the drive too often). Internal HDs are slightly more expensive than pre-configured external solutions, but tend to have longer warranties, and I imagine them being slightly higher quality and lasting a little bit longer. Am I wrong in thinking this? What factors do I need to consider? I've always gone for 7200 RPM drives, but I figure 5400RPM should be fine for Time Machine, right?
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Need a new External for Time Machine
- Thread starter Melodeath
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Thank you. Yes, I'm considering a NAS RAID 1 so that I can (sort of) stop dealing with this issue of Time Machine drives failing, but NAS enclosures seem pretty expensive
I have a 2010 iMac that i pulled the HD from and replaced with an SSD. The original HD now serves duty in an enclosure as the Time Machine backup drive, and I only turn it on a couple of times a month to do backups. I also have a small 1TB Seagate portable drive that is powered via the USB connection, and it stays connected and turned on all the time; it contains all our songs and pictures. It's actually a great little drive, and is considerably faster than the firewire drive it replaced. I figure I would be just fine using it for a backup drive for my setup, but it sounds like you keep your TM drive on all the time and might want something more reliable than just a single spinner?
That depends on the NAS. If it's mainly for back up and storage they can be fairly inexpensive. It's when you want/need more than two bays and/or better transcoding capabilities that they start getting pricy.
I have a Synology DS216j with 2x3tb WD Red drives. The NAS on Amazon is currently 169 and the HDDs are 109 each. It's been working great. I really enjoy Synologys UI. If I had to do over again though I would probably go all out with a 4 bay Plus or Play model to better future proof myself and more of a media center setup.
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Yeah I leave Time Machine on all the time, which I guess puts extra wear and tear on the drive? I imagine that is Apple's intended usage, but they're not necessarily designing software with drive health in mind.
Thanks for the tips. I'm still trying to decide on my best course of action. I have one active mac, a macbook pro (which I'd like to be backed up, but I don't use often), as well as a couple of windows PCs (again, which I don't use often, but would love for them to be backed up for peace of mind)
Go and get a WD My Passport Ultra 2TB. They got a 3 year warranty and doesn't require extra power except for the single USB connection.
If you want to backup multiple computers with the same drive, just partition it!
If you want to backup multiple computers with the same drive, just partition it!
No need to partition the drive to back up multiple computers, just let it sort itself out.
Drives are not always spinning with time machine only when they're performing backups or restorations and sometimes for maimtainence
Drives are not always spinning with time machine only when they're performing backups or restorations and sometimes for maimtainence
bad advice. you have to partition it, otherwise sooner or later 1 computer will eat up all the space and the second computer won't be able to backup anymore. if you partition (let's say 1TB in 700GB+300GB) when 700GB is full it deletes the oldest backups and doesn't eat up the 300GB reserved space of the another computer.
Good advice there.
Do you solely use Apple's TM backup software with your Synology or do you use something else as well in case a bug develops?
I also have a 750gb external drive I keep in a fire resistant safe. And some stuff in the cloud.