I will be getting a new laptop with an internal SSD drive. I have an external HDD for personal files. I might buy an external SSD drive for use with Logic Pro X. Is it okay to backup my drives (SSD and HDD) using Time Machine to an HDD to save money? Backup drives don’t need to be SSD drives, right?
MacBook Pro (2020 and later)
An external HDD will work for a backup drive. However, for Big Sur it must be formatted as APFS, and APFS can be extremely slow with a HDD. APFS is optimized for SSDs. You could certainly start with an HDD and see if the performance is acceptable. An SSD will probably cost ~ 3x to 4x what an HDD with the same storage will cost. I would recommend the SSD.
An external HDD will work for a backup drive. However, for Big Sur it must be formatted as APFS, and APFS can be extremely slow with a HDD. APFS is optimized for SSDs. You could certainly start with an HDD and see if the performance is acceptable. An SSD will probably cost ~ 3x to 4x what an HDD with the same storage will cost. I would recommend the SSD.
I recommend drives from OWC (MacSales.com) as they have proven reliability, excellent customer support and warranties. Consider one of these : OWC Mercury Elite Pro 7200 RPM Storage - excellent choice for Time Machine usage, inexpensive and come in larger sizes than SSDs. It comes with its own power supply. Make sure you get one that's about 2 ½ - 3 times the size of the data you'll be backing up.
I've been using one with TM for 5 years now and it's running beautifully. When I upgraded to Big Sur I erased the drive to start over and it formatted the drive to APFS Case Sensitive. There's no problem. The early APFS was not that good with rotational drives but now they are fine.
I have used many different mechanical drives over the years in my own docking station. Mostly using WD blue drives. Recently I started using SSD's for my TM for faster access and restoring. Never had any issues (knock on wood).
When you use a drive for TM with Big Sur+ it will format to APFS case sensitive (default). This will work fine and not to worry.
I have 2 external HDD, one for Time Machine the other for local backups. I'm using Big Sur and all my external hard drives are formatted as Extended Journaled and they all work fine.
I was under the impression that APFS is faster than Extended Journaled for external hard drives?? I
I use a 2TB NVME drive (I have a 512GB internal). I also have two clones that I also keep just in case.
My total size to backup is about 2.5TB so need a TM drive about 6TB. Waiting for the SSDs to offer a larger than 4TB drive or the price to drop below the $400 minimum price that I can find now for a bare SSD. I use OWC's Sata Drive Dock for external storage and other systems:
May I ask you you went with case sensitive as opposed to case-insensitive?
What size SSD do you use for your TM?
Very impressive!
External Hard Drive for Time Machine
