My old 3TB La Cie drive is, well, old, and I want to stay ahead of any possible failure. I have a late 2015 iMac and plan to upgrade, probably to a lMacBook Pro. What kind of external storage device should I use for primary backup/recovery protection?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 11.6
everyone will have a different opinion on this question. in my application, i find that an HDD works good enough for me. but i've not ever needed to restore from my TM. so speed is not an issue. and i have an iMac, so i don't need portability. if you do move to a MacBook, i would go for an SSD, strictly for durability. you can drop (although not recommended) an SSD with less risk of damage over dropping an HDD.
everyone will have a different opinion on this question. in my application, i find that an HDD works good enough for me. but i've not ever needed to restore from my TM. so speed is not an issue. and i have an iMac, so i don't need portability. if you do move to a MacBook, i would go for an SSD, strictly for durability. you can drop (although not recommended) an SSD with less risk of damage over dropping an HDD.
Both SSDs and HDDs would be fine. It's really up to you.
On the one hand, SSDs still cost more than traditional HDDs especially in higher capacities. On the other hand SSDs are much faster and have no moving parts. With the portability of an MBP it may be preferable to use an SSD because they are very lightweight and most are/can be bus powered. I use a Seagate Barracuda Fast external SSD for similar backup purposes. It's very small, bus powered, USB 3.2 Gen 2 and comes in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities.
I would opt for the SSD for convenience, portability, speed, reliability, and technology.
+1
Can I / Should I use an SSD device for Time Machine?
