Which External Hard Drive for Backup and Which Backup Program is Best?

[crowe-t]

Will a Western Digital Elements External Hard Drive work with Carbon Copy Cloner?

Is Carbon Copy Cloner the best way to run a back up?

Is Time Machine any good?

 

[mikzn]

I have 4 WD external drives (they are great) and use them for difference back ups all in use with CCC for weekly cloning 2 MBP's and a media drive for Music and Movies, and another drive for pictures and home videos.

CCC works great - much better than Time Machine (IMHO) - easy to set up week scripts and CCC will prompt to connect the drive if it cannot find it connected

 

[crowe-t]

Will Carbon Copy Cloner work with Mac OS 10.6.8?

Does CCC work with WD Elements External Hard Drives?

 

[honestone33]

Will Carbon Copy Cloner work with Mac OS 10.6.8?

Does CCC work with WD Elements External Hard Drives?

I suspect no issues with the WD drive. CCC does have an "unsupported" version, V3.5.7, that is compatible with Snow Leopard:

Download CCC - Bombich Software

bombich.com

Also, V2.7.1 of SuperDuper! is compatible with Snow Leopard:

SuperDuper!

(Look on the right hand side, under the heading "System Requirements", and you'll see V2.7.1 mentioned).

 

[crowe-t]

Does anyone know if CCC works with the WD Elements External Hard Drive?

 

[||\||]

Hard disk drives are hard disk drives. Regardless of manufacturer, they will all operate as back up storage similarly. I use several WD externals with CCC.

 

[crowe-t]

So it doesn't matter if it's a WD Elements or My Book?
I'm just not too familiar with the differences between the various WD External Hard Drives.
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Will the new WD External Hard Drives work with Mac OS 10.6.8?

 

[mikzn]

Yes the elements work with CCC - good idea to reformat any new drive first with disk utilities

here is a link to one on amazon with over 7000 reviews - mostl all positive

 

[crowe-t]

Is there a Western Digital External Hard dRive that has a loop through so I can attached another external hard drive?

 

[mikzn]

A "powered" usb hub might be a better option for drive to drive transfers and back ups

 

[honestone33]

Yes the elements work with CCC - good idea to reformat any new drive first with disk utilities

here is a link to one on amazon with over 7000 reviews - mostl all positive

Yes, it is mandatory to erase the drive when you get it, and then format it via the appropriate Mac format.

 

[Fishrrman]

Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. They work with almost anything.

I'm ambivalent towards WD and Seagate-labled drives. The failure rates are too high.
I'd suggest Toshiba or HGST

If your backup needs are under 2tb, you might consider:
- buy a "bare" 2.5" drive
- buy a USB3 enclosure (these are cheap)
- put the drive into the enclosure
- initialize (erase) with disk utility to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled.
- now, ready-to-use with either CCC or SD.

 

[honestone33]

Use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. They work with almost anything.

HYup, either will work fine. I use SuperDuper@!.

I'm ambivalent towards WD and Seagate-labled drives. The failure rates are too high.
I'd suggest Toshiba or HGST[/QUOTE]

I always had good fortunes with Seagate drives, even when I used then with my Apple IIE and IIGS machines.

If your backup needs are under 2tb, you might consider:
- buy a "bare" 2.5" drive
- buy a USB3 enclosure (these are cheap)
- put the drive into the enclosure
- initialize (erase) with disk utility to Mac OS extended with journaling enabled.
- now, ready-to-use with either CCC or SD.

Better yet, get a Samsung SSD, and follow steps 2 through 5 above.

 

[crowe-t]

How much larger should the back up hard drive be than the computer's hard drive when using either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper?

I think using Time Machine it'll have to be about 4 times larger but I could be wrong.

 

[Plutonius]

CCC works great - much better than Time Machine (IMHO)

I'm curious why you think that CCC it is much better ?

 

[Weaselboy]

How much larger should the back up hard drive be than the computer's hard drive when using either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper?

I think using Time Machine it'll have to be about 4 times larger but I could be wrong.

The drive size is somewhat irrelevant. What matters is how much data is on the drive to be backed up. So, for example, you might have a 2TB internal drive you want to backup and it only has 250GB of space used. So you even if you allowed for double that to allow for some storage of old file versions, a 500GB drive would work just fine.

So I would just buy a drive around twice the size of the amount of data you expect to want to backup.

 

[jgrove]

I used SuperDuper for a few years, but now use ChronoSync as it can be configured in a number of ways. I have never been sure of TM but ChronoSync will act in a similar way if you configure it to do so, it will also backup to a NAS box

 

[crowe-t]

Are G-Technology external drives any good? I believe Western Digital makes them.

 

[Weaselboy]

Are G-Technology external drives any good? I believe Western Digital makes them.

They are fine, but as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, all hard drives are pretty much the same. Just decide what size you want and grab whatever USB3 drive you can find on sale.

 

[mikzn]

I'm curious why you think that CCC it is much better ?

I like the cloning aspect (complete bootable back-up) and the fact that I can make scripts to copy external disk to external disk, or for individual files or folder to an external drive

For example backing up the hidden folder with all the outlook data - once a week, backing up iTunes library twice a week on separate drives (in case a back-up was a bad back up), 3 large Photos libraries to an external drive once a week, etc

Plus the ton of back up information on thier web site and if needed help / support

 

[crowe-t]

I see some of the WD external drives come with encryption? What is encryption and is it necessary for a back up drive?

 

[Plutonius]

I see some of the WD external drives come with encryption? What is encryption and is it necessary for a back up drive?

Encryption makes the data on the drive unreadable to anyone unless they have the password.

It's up to you if you think that you need it but I look at it as just another thing that could go wrong.

In any case, I don't believe that you need to use it even if the drive says that it supports encryption.
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The drive size is somewhat irrelevant. What matters is how much data is on the drive to be backed up. So, for example, you might have a 2TB internal drive you want to backup and it only has 250GB of space used. So you even if you allowed for double that to allow for some storage of old file versions, a 500GB drive would work just fine.

So I would just buy a drive around twice the size of the amount of data you expect to want to backup.

Time machine will fill the entire drive over time. It only starts deleting the incremental backups when the drive is almost full (i.e. a larger backup drive will contain more Time Machine backups).

 

[crowe-t]

Are the G-Technology external drives any good?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1081263-REG/g_technology_0g03594_g_drive_usb_g1_4tb.html

 

[honestone33]

I like the cloning aspect (complete bootable back-up) and the fact that I can make scripts to copy external disk to external disk, or for individual files or folder to an external drive.

Exactly! SuperDuper! does the same, and is excellent. Also, such bootable backups make recovery so much easier, and also makes moving to a new Mac OS simpler too.

 

[Weaselboy]

Time machine will fill the entire drive over time. It only starts deleting the incremental backups when the drive is almost full (i.e. a larger backup drive will contain more Time Machine backups).

Understood and you are correct. I was only trying to explain the backup drive size is more driven by how much actual data one has than the source drive size.