hard drive for early 2015 MacBook pro retina

iCloud is a file syncing service and not a backup service. You should buy a decent external drive for regular system backups since you never know when the laptop may fail unexpectedly or when you may accidentally delete a very important file. Plus SSDs can fail at any time without any warning signs. Data recovery on an SSD is nearly impossible even when trying to recover a deleted file from a working drive.

Just about any external hard drive will do in a pinch to back up the system. If you get the WD drive, just do not use the included WD software as it is not needed. For any external drive use macOS Disk Utility to erase the external drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled) before using the external drive on a Mac. If you have trouble erasing the drive, then click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show all devices" so that the physical drive appears in the left pane of Disk Utility. You shouldn't have any problems erasing a drive when you select the whole physical drive.

The Mercury Elite Pro drives from OWC are very good external drives. Plus the enclosure is easily opened if you ever need to upgrade or replace the actual hard drive found within the enclosure. A lot of portable external drives now come with non-detachable USB cables. You should avoid these drives at all cost because if the cable becomes damaged, then you cannot access the data on the drive. Always get a portable drive with a removable USB cable.

Well, depending on your current drive size you can get a pretty reasonable ext hard drive from western digital for somewhere around $60 on Amazon. That would give you 2Tb of storage.

y_p_w wrote:

Kind of late to the show, but for a complete setup and not a separate enclosure and bare drive I like the Seagate Backup Plus Slim. Enclosures reserve a lot of USB current, but I’ve found the Seagate to only need 200mA on USB 3.0 and 160mA on a USB 2.0 hub. My enclosure always requested 800 mA and wouldn’t mount with an unpowered hub.

I like Seagate one because tear downs show that they use a real SATA drive while WD, Toshiba, and others use all in one setups where a bad interface normally requires scrapping rather than extracting the bare drive to place in an enclosure.

Indeed ... all-in-ones run the risks of "what did they really use?". But if enclosures require more power than USB-* can provide, also a risk. The deciding factor for me is the fact I can have a stack of drives instead just one drive per enclosure.

But that is just me. YMMV (YourMileageMayVary).

Anyhoo ... the WD should last long enough to endure this crash-dive, then she has the luxury of planning other options.

steve359 wrote:

I use an OWC enclosure and find the best (or at least better) drives. Some years it is WesternDigital, other years Seagate or Hitachi has the better product. Internet searches or asking here will give you good recommendations.

I so miss Hitachi since it seems like WD has finally absorbed them. What a great loss!

I had a WD "total drive" product years ago and will never do so again. The OWC is a good quality interface card and coupled with a good drive makes a good external drive Plus you can swap drives in the OWC enclosure (multiple backup disks). The WD combo I had years ago was a middling-quality disk attached to a middling-quality interface card and it failed after 2 years.

But that is just my experience, and your experience may be different.

Thanks for the information I wasn't quite sure about long term quality, but the OP was in a rush to backup the system before having the laptop examined & repaired by Apple on Monday so a locally purchased drive is the only option. I know a couple co-workers who have used WD package drives without issue that I am aware. That is why I also assemble my own external drives as well.

If you have time to wait to order (which I doubt because you need to get the backup done ... and you need start early to handle errors) I would go with the OWC enclosure and a drive.

But ff I were you, I would FIRST buy something from BestBuy today (still a few more hours as of my timezone) or Wally-Mart (though I do not like supporting them). THEN get the backup done, get your system repaired. AFTER SYSTEM IS REPAIRED order the better (my opinion) OWC enclosure and backup drives.

Crash-dive needs different approach than "optimal" sometimes.

suzyQ526 wrote:

I need to replace my battery in my MacBook pro retina early 2015.

Without spending a lot of extra money, what is the most affordable hard drive I can buy to backup my data with time machine?

Buy an external hard drive, do you know how to shop around?

Here is my google search term: "lessons in how to shop for a external hard drive"

Here is the 1st hit on top:

https://www.itprotoday.com/high-speed-storage/5-things-look-portable-hard-drive-lessons-learned-field

3-2-1 Backup Strategy: three copies of your data, two different methods, and one offsite.

Boot clone https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-10081

How to use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

Use DiskUtility Restore feature https://support.apple.com/guide/disk-utility/restore-a-disk-dskutl14062/mac

$53 to save data before possible loss? Absolutely a good deal both financially and strategically.

After the backup report back for help on further solutions that can wait to execute.

I’ve seen the tear down vids of WD and Toshiba drives showing that they used proprietary interface boards that were fixed to the drive. I’ve heard of entire drives being purchased just to be a donor board for a damaged drive.

The Seagate tear down I saw was kind of old, but showed a Samsung SATA bare drive. The enclosure didn’t look that great once it was opened up, but it obviously wasn’t meant to be reused. It used a bit of cardboard and adhesives. But they can test it for current draw. An enclosure that has to accommodate almost anything needs to consider worst case.

I've never used it since I assemble my own external drives, but it should be Ok since it appears to have a USB port on the enclosure.