Using an SSD for a Time Machine backup?

[Irishman]

I have already upgraded the internal HD in my late 2012 21.5” iMac this past year, and the new Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD really gave my old Mac a new lease on life.

I also have been using an external Seagate 2TB hard drive as a Time Machine backup, but now that has gone kaput. Does anyone have experience with using an external SSD for a Time Machine backup? I know that Samsung makes their T5 and T7 lines of external SSDs, but I’m not sure if anyone might be aware of any issues with regard to macOS Mojave?

 

[chrfr]

I have already upgraded the internal HD in my late 2012 21.5” iMac this past year, and the new Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SSD really gave my old Mac a new lease on life.

I also have been using an external Seagate 2TB hard drive as a Time Machine backup, but now that has gone kaput. Does anyone have experience with using an external SSD for a Time Machine backup? I know that Samsung makes their T5 and T7 lines of external SSDs, but I’m not sure if anyone might be aware of any issues with regard to macOS Mojave?

I like the idea of using larger, slower disks for my backup because I really don't care how long my backup takes, and restoration is rare enough that speed isn't a big concern for me there. I'd rather have a larger disk that'd allow for more backup history.

 

[weaztek]

With Time Machine you can back up to any kind of storage you want: SSD, USB thumb drive, hard drive, etc. It won't backup any faster on an SSD though since the write speed is done slowly in the background so as to affect computer performance as little as possible.

When my external hard drive went kaput I bought a new hard drive dock ($20), took it out of the old one, and tried it in the new enclosure with success. Now I can just buy HDDs without an enclosure and swap them into the dock as needed.

 

[Irishman]

I like the idea of using larger, slower disks for my backup because I really don't care how long my backup takes, and restoration is rare enough that speed isn't a big concern for me there. I'd rather have a larger disk that'd allow for more backup history.

Do you use a Time Machine backup for your Mac?

 

[chrfr]

Do you use a Time Machine backup for your Mac?

Yes, I use big cheap USB drives for it. I also use Backblaze.

 

[glenthompson]

I use a SSD for a Carbon Copy Cloner backup in addition to Time Machine to spinning hard drives. The CCC backup lets me boot in the event of a catastrophic failure. Makes for a faster restore. While a SSD would work for TM its a waste.

 

[Fishrrman]

I doubt that an SSD would be of much use for time machine.

HOWEVER... for either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper... it's great.

I have the internal 512gb drive on my 2018 Mini partitioned into 4 "pieces":
Boot
Main
Media
Music
... and I keep my data segregated to such partitions.

Most of my day-to-day data resides on the "main" partition which is 50gb in size.
I can launch CCC and run an incremental backup of that drive.
It takes... 2 seconds (that is not a mis-type).

The boot partition takes a little longer... about 2-3 minutes (much of it "updating the caches" at the close of the backup).

 

[Boyd01]

I use SSD's for Carbon Copy bootable clones. This would get me back up and running immediately in an emergency. But I use a 5tb hard drive on my LAN for time machine. I agree, there would be little advantage to a SSD for Time Machine.

 

[Ifti]

I have no spinning hard drives at all (other then in my NAS). All my external drives are SSD, including those for Time Machine and CCC.

8TB ThunderBlade V4 - work drive used with FCPX
4TB Thunderblade V4 - also used with FCPX - more of a spare drive really!
2TB Sandisk Extreme Pro - used for Time Machine Backups
1TB Sandisk Extreme Pro - used for CCC
2TB Glyph Atom Pro - spare drive, currently unused.

I have several other external SSD drives that I have up for sale in the marketplace - I seem to have amassed more then I need!

 

[IowaLynn]

Me: SSD TimeMachine - bus power, silent, easy to be always on and connected.

I got out my 2012 2TB WD Green drive, and while it works it also has its own power, larger drive case.

Everything I have runs off UPS to insure there are no interruptions of power. And those big power adapters that hog outlets.

I saw one person with mini had taped their SSD to underside of the desk out if the way.

 

[bousozoku]

I've got a 4TB hard drive for backups. I doubt that an SSD would hold much of an advantage and the longevity of such a device is a bit scary for long term storage.

 

[ChedNasad]

Why are people saying it wouldn't be advantageous for time machine? I went from hour+ long backup times on an HDD to 5-10 minutes on an SSD. Restoring from time machine on an SSD has also been drastically faster with the copying process taking 20-30 minutes max instead of hours. I won't ever go back to HDD backups. My internal storage is 1 TB and my backup drive is likewise 1TB. They're reasonably priced these days too. If you store TBs of data then maybe it's better to go with HDD but the performance, small form factor, and resistance to water, drops, magnetic fields etc is huge.

 

[glenthompson]

Why are people saying it wouldn't be advantageous for time machine? I went from hour+ long backup times on an HDD to 5-10 minutes on an SSD. Restoring from time machine on an SSD has also been drastically faster with the copying process taking 20-30 minutes max instead of hours. I won't ever go back to HDD backups. My internal storage is 1 TB and my backup drive is likewise 1TB. They're reasonably priced these days too. If you store TBs of data then maybe it's better to go with HDD but the performance, small form factor, and resistance to water, drops, magnetic fields etc is huge.

Generally better to have a Time Machine backup drive that's larger than your source drive to provide better versioning. That ramps up the cost. Also some of us are still in the mindset of SSDs being fairly expensive - I paid almost $500 for a 512gb SSD for my 2011 MBP. In my experience TM backups to a SSD aren't that much faster unless you have a huge amount of changes to backup. Most of mine take just a few minutes to backup to a spinning drive or over the net to my NAS with spinning drives. I absolutely want my clone to be on a SSD since that's my main recovery drive in the event of a failure.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Why are people saying it wouldn't be advantageous for time machine? I went from hour+ long backup times on an HDD to 5-10 minutes on an SSD. Restoring from time machine on an SSD has also been drastically faster with the copying process taking 20-30 minutes max instead of hours. I won't ever go back to HDD backups. My internal storage is 1 TB and my backup drive is likewise 1TB. They're reasonably priced these days too. If you store TBs of data then maybe it's better to go with HDD but the performance, small form factor, and resistance to water, drops, magnetic fields etc is huge.

It's just the balance of Time vs Expense vs Capacity.
Figure our your own need of Capacity, then adjust between the Time and expense.
Or otherwise, set an amount of money spent for Time Machine, then balance Time with Capacity.

 

[theorist9]

Why are people saying it wouldn't be advantageous for time machine? I went from hour+ long backup times on an HDD to 5-10 minutes on an SSD. Restoring from time machine on an SSD has also been drastically faster with the copying process taking 20-30 minutes max instead of hours. I won't ever go back to HDD backups. My internal storage is 1 TB and my backup drive is likewise 1TB. They're reasonably priced these days too. If you store TBs of data then maybe it's better to go with HDD but the performance, small form factor, and resistance to water, drops, magnetic fields etc is huge.

Did you find any loss of speed, either for backing up to TM, or for entering TM and accessing backups, when your TM SSD got full?

 

[pshufd]

I use cheap Western Digital hard drives and use them until they die. I currently have three of them as I like to cross-backup my systems. With HDDs, you know that you have enough space for many years of backups. Always good to have multiple backups with remote storage. I will probably go 12 TB when the next Time Machine disk dies.

One thing that I'd like to do is consolidate to backing up over the network. I still don't have that working so I just hang a disk off each system.

 

[The1Biz]

Check to see if you can take apart the enclosure, it might just be a few screws, unless you have to pull the plastic apart. Odds are you can just put in a SSD or new hard drive into the enclosure. Despite the branding, any disk should work.

 

[ChedNasad]

Did you find any loss of speed, either for backing up to TM, or for entering TM and accessing backups, when your TM SSD got full?

Has yet to get full interestingly enough. There are 68 GB remaining so either time machine deletes old stuff to retain a decent buffer or I just over time have not quite filed it up. No decline in speed so far. Time Machine was broken for a few months for me when Monterey came out and during that time I did buy Carbon Copy Cloner and I will say that that is much faster than Time Machine and making backups. I use both now and have the same model extern SSD for each.

 

[an-other]

I use a Samsung T7 on an Air. It's more for portability and convenience over speed. It backs up to the lan when (infrequently connected.)

No claim it's the best value proposition.

 

[theorist9]

Has yet to get full interestingly enough. There are 68 GB remaining so either time machine deletes old stuff to retain a decent buffer or I just over time have not quite filed it up. No decline in speed so far. Time Machine was broken for a few months for me when Monterey came out and during that time I did buy Carbon Copy Cloner and I will say that that is much faster than Time Machine and making backups. I use both now and have the same model extern SSD for each.

Yeah, not sure how much buffer TM maintains. Still, you've only got 7% free, which is pretty close to full. So I'm wondering specifically: Is it still just as fast when you enter TM and want to scroll through the snapshots to look for a certain date? That's what I find is so slow now with my HDD.

 

[MarkC426]

I feel it's overkill for an SSD as a TM drive (unless you need portability).
After the initial first backup, it is generally a couple of minutes each incremental backup.
You can get a lot more for your money with a spinner, and as mentioned by others, bigger is better.

I recently fired up an old Lacie D2 which still works perfectly, to grab some stuff for my PowerBook G4.
Not been used for 10 years.

 

[pshufd]

I feel it's overkill for an SSD as a TM drive.
After the initial first backup, it is generally a couple of minutes each incremental backup.
You can get a lot more for your money with a spinner, and as mentioned by others, bigger is better.

I recently fired up an old Lacie D2 which still works perfectly.
Not been used for 10 years.

If you need an SSD for backup, you're doing something wrong in your work processes. I restore from backup maybe once in a year or two years.

I like the low power drives to minimize power usage and so that that aspect doesn't generate excess heat.

 

[Analog Kid]

SSDs work just fine for TimeMachine, and they make the backup process smoother for sure. It's just a question of value. I consider backups "bulk storage" and SSDs are still expensive for their size. For my primary desktop, I have two TM targets: a 2 disk HDD RAID attached directly, and a NAS over gigabit ethernet. It alternates between them. The direct attach RAID is faster, the NAS is deeper....

For my laptop I only backup to the NAS because I'm tired of the "disk not ejected properly" messages when I grab and go...

 

[belvdr]

If you're backing up anything large, I can see an SSD providing benefit in completing the job quickly. I'm at the point where any new storage will be flash-based.

 

[theorist9]

I feel it's overkill for an SSD as a TM drive (unless you need portability).
After the initial first backup, it is generally a couple of minutes each incremental backup.
You can get a lot more for your money with a spinner, and as mentioned by others, bigger is better.

I recently fired up an old Lacie D2 which still works perfectly, to grab some stuff for my PowerBook G4.
Not been used for 10 years.

I currently use HDD's for backup, but am planning to switch to SSD's, at least for my attached backups, which backup daily (I'll keep using HDD's for my archival backups, which are refreshed once every month or two and stored remotely). Here's my thoughts:

For attached backups, I use Carbon Copy Cloner for backups, plus Time Machine for versioning (in case I accidentally trash a a file I need later). Usually Carbon Copy Cloner runs at night, but sometimes I need to run it when I'm working. And when both it and TM are backing up together, my 2019 iMac becomes much less responsive. Since backups with an SSD are so much faster, it seems that having both TM and CCC backing up to an SSD would minimize the duration of that poor response period.

Plus in the event I do have to access TM, scrolling through the backup snapshots on my HDD is painfully slow; I expect an SSD would provide a significant increase in performance there.