Trying to make decision on hard drive solutions? I purchased a Samsung 500GB ($79.99) and 1TB ext drive ($137.99) on Black Friday. I also purchased Western Digital 1 TB for $42.99)!! I am trying to decide what makes sense. Most of my computers have at most 250 GB. Is SSD worth premium price, or should I go for the larger mechanical drive and save $$! Any perspective would be appreciated!
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Samsung SSD or WD Mech?
- Thread starter AverageGuy
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Mostly for backups. I have several flash drives for storage.
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Is 500GB enough for what I described?
Main drive should always be SSD. Mac OS and Windows both expect to run on SSD.
Many 2012-15 Apple laptops can be upgraded from SATA SSD to NVME SSD. Used SSD drives are cheap, especially 250GB. A 250GB SSD is still a good SSD, but 500GB and 1TB SSDs run faster.
I don't bother with 1TB HDDs / spinning rust any more. I try to avoid buying HDDS full stop, especially 3.5" HDDs. That said, last year I bought some 4TB 2.5" portable drives when they are cheap on Amazon, open them up and use the HDDs in my computers for backup.
Many 2012-15 Apple laptops can be upgraded from SATA SSD to NVME SSD. Used SSD drives are cheap, especially 250GB. A 250GB SSD is still a good SSD, but 500GB and 1TB SSDs run faster.
I don't bother with 1TB HDDs / spinning rust any more. I try to avoid buying HDDS full stop, especially 3.5" HDDs. That said, last year I bought some 4TB 2.5" portable drives when they are cheap on Amazon, open them up and use the HDDs in my computers for backup.
I'd create two backups:
1) Carbon Copy Cloner to create a clone on a 500GB SSD
2) Time Machine backup on a 1TB drive (SDD or HDD)
Why two, because the #1 will be bootable and boot fast, so you can boot on it over USB and continue to work if your internal ssd is dead.
And the #2 is to take advantage of the good integration of Time Machine recovery in case of restore. It does not matter it is slower, as you will use it only in case of full system restore.
Re-clone to #1 every week or so to keep it up-to-date a bit.
Encrypt #1
Put #1 in a separate place (your car etc...), in case of fire, theft of your computer, theft of #2 etc..
1) Carbon Copy Cloner to create a clone on a 500GB SSD
2) Time Machine backup on a 1TB drive (SDD or HDD)
Why two, because the #1 will be bootable and boot fast, so you can boot on it over USB and continue to work if your internal ssd is dead.
And the #2 is to take advantage of the good integration of Time Machine recovery in case of restore. It does not matter it is slower, as you will use it only in case of full system restore.
Re-clone to #1 every week or so to keep it up-to-date a bit.
Encrypt #1
Put #1 in a separate place (your car etc...), in case of fire, theft of your computer, theft of #2 etc..
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OP wrote:
"Mostly for backups. I have several flash drives for storage."
Use the large WD platter-based drive for backups.
Partition it if needed. That's what I do.
I'd replace the flash drives with the SSDs.
They're more reliable (and faster) than are USB flash drives.
As junkw mentioned, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create your backups. If you use either, the backups will be cloned and bootable -- EXACT copies of the source drives that can be mounted right in the finder for access.
If you've never tried or seen a cloned backup, you should give it a try.
Once you get used to it, you'll NEVER go back to time machine.
"Mostly for backups. I have several flash drives for storage."
Use the large WD platter-based drive for backups.
Partition it if needed. That's what I do.
I'd replace the flash drives with the SSDs.
They're more reliable (and faster) than are USB flash drives.
As junkw mentioned, use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to create your backups. If you use either, the backups will be cloned and bootable -- EXACT copies of the source drives that can be mounted right in the finder for access.
If you've never tried or seen a cloned backup, you should give it a try.
Once you get used to it, you'll NEVER go back to time machine.