What's the best external SSD for Macbook pro retina 15 inch (Late 2013)? I am using a Buffalo Mini Station HDD (1 TB) now, and it takes over 30 hours to back up my entire Macbook Pro with 950 Gb of data using Time Machine. I'm looking at Sandisk Extreme Pro & Samsung T7 SSD. Any suggestions or insights would be appreciated. Thanks!
MacBook Pro Retina
I use any reasonably priced 2.5" SATA SSD installed into a suitably sized USB caddy. I have 9 of these of varying sizes all performing various jobs. Back-ups are one of them as well using some for booting into different versions of the macOS. Been doing this for years. I source the cheapest I can find on the internet, usually Amazon and eBay. All of them work well and have never failed unlike the IDE and SATA drives I used prior to moving to SSDs.
In my experience any size Sandisk and Samsung branded SSDs work fine as do Crucial and Western Digital. Bear in mind the first back-up, regardless of what you use software or hardware, is always going to take time. The more there is the longer it takes. 950GB of data is a lot and if you're backing all of that to a 1TB drive then you're not allowing for the "10% rule". I'm not surprised its taking even longer and probably the last 100GB or so is taking the longest time of all.
In a nutshell the 10% rule is you must leave at least 10% of free space left on whatever capacity drive you're using. So for a 1TB drive it's a 100GB and so on. Think of it a little like filling a pail of water. If you fill it right to the brim you'll spill some and make it more awkward to carry. But if you fill it to a reasonable level it becomes easier to carry and you won't spill a drop.
I use any reasonably priced 2.5" SATA SSD installed into a suitably sized USB caddy. I have 9 of these of varying sizes all performing various jobs. Back-ups are one of them as well using some for booting into different versions of the macOS. Been doing this for years. I source the cheapest I can find on the internet, usually Amazon and eBay. All of them work well and have never failed unlike the IDE and SATA drives I used prior to moving to SSDs.
In my experience any size Sandisk and Samsung branded SSDs work fine as do Crucial and Western Digital. Bear in mind the first back-up, regardless of what you use software or hardware, is always going to take time. The more there is the longer it takes. 950GB of data is a lot and if you're backing all of that to a 1TB drive then you're not allowing for the "10% rule". I'm not surprised its taking even longer and probably the last 100GB or so is taking the longest time of all.
In a nutshell the 10% rule is you must leave at least 10% of free space left on whatever capacity drive you're using. So for a 1TB drive it's a 100GB and so on. Think of it a little like filling a pail of water. If you fill it right to the brim you'll spill some and make it more awkward to carry. But if you fill it to a reasonable level it becomes easier to carry and you won't spill a drop.
Best external SSD for Macbook Pro Retina 15 Inch (Late 2013)?
