Best External Hard Drive Backup Choices?

Hardware
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I know your question is looking for information on quality back up drives, but I would like to comment on your partitioning and back up strategy.

It is not a good idea to have both your clone and your time capsule backups in the same drive. A drive failure will wipe out both of your backups. Better to have them on separate physical drives. You should also include some sort of cloud backup as well DSG you alsways have an off-site copy.

I am also not a fan of keeping your backup drive in the vicinity of your computer. A break in and the thief has both your computer and all your backup data. You are left starting from scratch.

I have my time capsule drive in a separate location from my computer and I use a separate drive to do SuperDuper clones. I store (hide) this drive in a location away from the computer and in a place that does not look interesting to a thief. I utilize Backblaze for off site, last resort backups.

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22

As already covered off site back-up is always a great move. I used CCC to back up to my brothers Mac 100 miles away and he backs up to mine in return. My suggestion find a family member or trusted friends and do the same.

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I’m still goign to keep the Time Machine partition and the misc backup partition on the harddrive connected to the mac mini. But i could repurpose an old portable external drive for my clone and keep it somewhere else.

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24

I recommend using a drive made for a NAS, such as the WD Red NAS drive. From what I’ve read, NAS drives are engineered for always-on environments.

25

Excellent choice! Now, about your original question: There are many negative comments regarding WD drives elsewhere on this forum, and I personally have not had good luck with them. I have had really good luck with Seagate. And I heartily endorse @JohnAtl’s recommendation to get a drive that is meant for NAS usage.

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Knock on wood my G-drive has been bullet proof.

27

Just to put this out there… EVERY hard drive WILL fail eventually.

Western Digital and Seagate are the 2 big players currently. In every Apple store you will find external drives from LaCie (Seagate) or G-Technology (Western Digital) for purchase. When I am asked which HD do I recommend, I suggest the one that can hold twice my data needs. I have been burned by both Seagate and WD in the past, so now my plan is to replace my drives every 5 years.

Having both an onsite and offsite backup solution is the smartest solution IMHO. Cloud based backup are great… but bringing everything back can be very slow. Having it on a HD can get you up and running quicker. Time Machine, SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner are all good options. Each has its pros and cons. Use what works best for your needs.

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