Looking for recommendations for a replacement for my external Apple Time Capsule drive

Most external HD's I've seen have pretty slow transfer speeds and most appear to contain 5400 RPM types?

Any hard disk today exceeds the gigabit limit of most ethernet networking by a very healthy margin. So not quite to the real world speed limit of USB3 but not too far away. And 5400rpm drives are a lot quieter usually than 7200rpm drives. Plus the data density on the hard disk means inner area of the disk angular speed versus outer diameter is far more important than rotation rate. It will make no difference to your backup speed. To me, noisy drive in my workspace is unacceptable. So I would put quietness of the drive higher than raw transfer speed.

I did just run this test btw. The normal Time Machine backup average speed over gigabit ethernet is around 60GByte/hour. Far below gigabit speed of around 360GByte/hour.

Doing a full Time Machine backup directly to a 7200rpm seagate drive plugged into USB3 takes around the same time.

Even using SSD vs HDD will make very little difference.

I have tested this personally for network backup (The gigabit network limit plus Time Machine slowness makes HDD just as fast as SSD) Yet to do the test for local backup.

Let me further explain that statement.. if you use Time Machine as Apple intended.. ie backup permanently plugged into the computer.. it will do incremental backups hourly.. which are very small and take just a couple of minutes to run. Most of that time is Time Machine doing its preparation and clean up. The 100MB say of backups is near enough to instanteous. You will NOT notice the backup at all. In this scenario the difference between SSD and HDD is so marginal as to be inconsequential.

As currently setup I have a 4TB Touro external USB3 drive plugged into the Mac. Backups from Time Machine running normally are not noticeable.. so using SSD will not be any improvement.

If you are manually backing up daily say or weekly, due to exceedingly slow way Time Machine works an SSD may help but again I suspect it will be marginal. When you break the normal Time Machine backup method it has to check the existing backup against the drive which can take quite a while.. I will need to run a test to tell you exactly how big a difference that makes.

Some of the other people here may have done this testing and be able to give you an answer.

Reliability is a major concern

If reliability of the backup is your main priority don't use Time Machine. As you will quickly see reading posts here Time Machine has become less than reliable over several Mac OS versions.

Do not trust it. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for daily backups. And occasional Time Machine as well. CCC will allow you to boot the computer from the backup allowing really fast testing of integrity. Time Machine is far more complex. It is good for replacing a corrupted file or going back to earlier version but to rebuild a boot drive is a task that will take a day or two now. (much worse since Big Sur).

Reliability of average HDD as used in most USB drives is around 5years. In simple terms you should replace the disk every 5years regardless.

As Bob has already mentioned he has had good success with LaCie drives.

I have had good experiences with Touro drives and WD drives. Seagate for me terrible.

Every company has bad batches of drives. So for everyone who swears against seagate for example there will be equal number who swear by them and have had terrible experiences with all the drives we listed as good. More important then is warranty and DO NOT TRUST any one drive. Cloud is the best for reliability.

Because you are only looking for a small drive.. 2TB is small these days.

Put one 2TB SSD into your cart. That is $219 for Samsung T5 2TB (good brand and good lifespan)

For that price you can buy 3 or 4 2TB WD Passport or Seagate portable drives.

Take your pick.. one 2TB SSD or use 3x2TB hard disks rotated weekly with one stored offsite.

Guess which option has the better reliability??

Guess which is absolutely immune to ransomware, floods, fire and theft?

Seeking recommendations for a replacement 2GB standalone USB3 drive.

First of all 2GB is typo and you mean 2TB at a guess.

But what is a standalone USB3 drive?

Sorry but that is unclear.. a USB drive must be plugged into a Mac or a NAS or a Router to work as a backup device... never standalone. So what are you going to plug the USB into??

The best for Time Machine is to plug the USB drive directly into the Mac. It is faster, much more reliable and cheapest possible solution for replacement of Time Capsule. Any over network solutions are going to have many more problems.

As far as buying SSD type or normal HDD type.. (spinning rust) the later is cheaper, uses far less power, is much better for overwriting the same files over and over again. And for backups there is no great speed improvement using SSD. Doubtless SSD will eventually take over.. but for now good brand USB drives from WD or Seagate or LaCie or Touro (HGST) are fine. They are pretty much consumer items you buy in any big electronics or computer store. Key difference will be warranty and support which depends on model you buy and how much you want to pay.

3.5" desktop drives (aways have a power supply) last longer and are faster than 2.5" portable self powered drives.

The Time Capsule was a unique type of product......a Wi-Fi router with a built in hard drive. No other manufacturer offered a product like this.

A USB drive is the simplest, cheapest, fastest and most reliable way to go for backups. Personally, I have used Lacie drives for many years with flawless results, but there are other good brands available as well.

That being said, the drive will need to be connected directly to your Mac for backups to occur. Great if you have desktop. Not so convenient if you have a laptop that will be moving around.

So, If you are thinking about backing up your Mac(s) using Wi-Fi, the answers are not as simple. Might that be the case?

What I was looking for was the recommendation for an external drive with USB 3 supporting speed if possible, to act as the back-up drive for my Time Machine.

Just about any drive manufactured in the last few years will meet this requirement.

Recommendations are tough, since the only products that most of us can really recommend.....or not recommend.....are products that we have used ourselves. If you trust the reliability of test reports and articles, you can find any number of "recommended" drives. For example:

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-external-hard-drives-for-mac

Time Machine is slow, so unless you are already sold on the idea of a SSD, there will be no speed improvements using an SSD with Time Machine.