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Can I use an SSD external drive for Time Machine backups

Can I use an SSD external drive for Time Machine backups? My old 2T Seagate has decided to live the rest of it's life as Read Only (I've tried all the fixes that I could find to no avail) and I need to replace it. Was thinking a 2T SSD (I have just about 1T on my Mac). Seems like I should be able to do that but don't want to buy something I can't use. I've got an ancient 2011 iMac running High Sierra v10.13.6


Thx for any insight

Posted on May 4, 2023 8:20 AM

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Posted on Dec 9, 2023 4:46 PM

Total lack of knowledge. HDD does not cut it for anything. SSDs will last more and will be more reliable than HDD. And if you need to restore your machine because, let’s say you need to delete your drive because of logical errors that won’t go away as per Apple documentation, then you will see the difference. Good choice on an SSD

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 9, 2023 4:46 PM in response to rkaufmann87

Total lack of knowledge. HDD does not cut it for anything. SSDs will last more and will be more reliable than HDD. And if you need to restore your machine because, let’s say you need to delete your drive because of logical errors that won’t go away as per Apple documentation, then you will see the difference. Good choice on an SSD

May 4, 2023 3:46 PM in response to MacHelpWanted

Hi there!


Have you tried to erase your backup disk, then use Time Machine to select it as your backup disk again?


If the erase process fails, you might need a new backup disk.


If you need to replace your backup disk, the SanDisk Professional 2TB G-Drive ArmorATD™ - Apple should work well for you. The SanDisk external disk includes the older style USB-C to USB-A cable needed to connect the disk to your model of iMac.


Hope this helps!


Jack

May 11, 2024 4:44 PM in response to andrewfromjoplin

andrewfromjoplin wrote:

Out of curiosity, what has your speed been like for Time Machine? I'm also contemplating getting a 2TB SSD out of sheer annoyance at how slow the backups can be.

I have been using both SSDs (various models -- WD, G-Drive, Samsung, Apricorn) and HDDs (mostly WD, several Apricorn) for Time Machine. The initial very first Time Machine backup is much faster with the SSD, maybe less than 1 hour to back up 400 GB versus 2-3 hours for the HDD. But after that, the incremental backups seem to be almost equally as fast -- I think the speed of the SSD (500-1000 MB/s) over the HDD (100-200 MB/s) doesn't really factor in because most of the time for the Time Machine incremental backups seems to go into organizing many small file copies and establishing the soft links that Time Machine uses on the backup drive. So either way the incremental backups tend to be under a minute for me.

Jan 26, 2024 3:30 PM in response to VikingOSX

Apples Disk Drive utility software has four APFS format options: APFS, APFS (Encrypted), APFS (Case-sensitive), and APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted) for formatting new SSDs.

Not yet sure of using the options at this point. Case-sensitive seems important to me.

For some reason, I previously thought the APFS data was already hardware encrypted on a Mac internal drive. I must be wrong.


From the support page "File system formats available in Disk Utility on Mac":

Choose one of the following APFS formats for Mac computers using macOS 10.13 or later.

  • APFS: Uses the APFS format. Choose this option if you don’t need an encrypted or case-sensitive format.
  • APFS (Encrypted): Uses the APFS format and encrypts the volume.
  • APFS (Case-sensitive): Uses the APFS format and is case-sensitive to file and folder names. For example, folders named “Homework” and “HOMEWORK” are two different folders.
  • APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted): Uses the APFS format, is case-sensitive to file and folder names, and encrypts the volume. For example, folders named “Homework” and “HOMEWORK” are two different folders.




May 4, 2023 3:20 PM in response to MacHelpWanted

What Mac model and year do you have?

What system are your running?

Was the Seagate used for Time Machine or something else or both?

Will Time Machine work with the Seagate?

If you erase the Seagate and use it for Time Machine it will be converted to the APFS format and will be Read Only for everyone except Time Machine.


So your Seagate may not be worthless. Answer the questions and we may be aloe to solve your problem with it.


Jan 26, 2024 1:14 PM in response to MacHelpWanted

I just had another hard disk drive fail to boot properly after years of use. SSDs are more expensive but they should be more reliable over time. If you drop an SSD, there is little that can break inside them. The larger the SSD the better because they can use the extra space to avoid erase cycles. What software you use to do backups is a good question. Time machine that does archival backups or Superduper that performs snapshot backups.

Can I use an SSD external drive for Time Machine backups

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