I need recommendations for an external hard-drive for our new iMac

just about any manufacturer's drives will work. one of my external drives is a WD my passport, and it works fine. but please be sure to not use any software from the manufacturer (or install such software yourself) that supposedly makes the drive "Mac ready".

when you use software from just about any manufacturer for their storage device you run the risk of that same software not being compatible with macOS updates / upgrades. it can cause the software to stop working. at best this will cause you a headache. at worst it can render your data inaccessible. it is always best to use disk utility to erase and format a drive before use to remove any preloaded software.

please see Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support.

Tamlouie wrote:

• You wrote "I'm not worried that OWC is going to pick unreliable drives. However, if I was getting a desktop hard drive, I think I'd have a preference for a mechanism that

Used CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) – not SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording)

• Was not too noisy"

On the OWC site, I can't find anything that distinguishes CMR/SMR. All I have seen state "Standard Mechanism".

If you have a preference for CMR drives, you may need to buy internal mechanisms and enclosures separately, so that you can buy a drive mechanism for which CMR vs. SMR specifications are available.

Seagate – CMR and SMR Hard Drives – Which Drive Has What?

Western Digital – Steps to Determine if an Internal Drive uses CMR or SMR Technology

Toshiba – PC Hard Disk Drives

Tamlouie wrote:

On the OWC site, I can't find anything that distinguishes CMR/SMR. All I have seen state "Standard Mechanism".

I would be surprised and very disappointed if OWC sold any SMR drives with a pre-built external hard drive. You should be Ok with the Mercury external drives from OWC.

In my experience these have always been reliable and popular with Mac owners. All are available in a variety of capacities:

• Lacie d2 drives
• OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual drives (I especially like the model with the built-in USB hub)
• G-Drive drives

Tamlouie wrote:

Thanks for both of your comments/suggestions. When I searched for best external hard drive on Wirecutter, this came up for Macs Western Digital My Passport Ultra (5 TB) Mac-compatible version. I don't know anything much on how to gauge what is best, and Wirecutter usually is pretty solid advice (not always). I will look into those suggested but am open to more suggestions and knowledge.

When you say "best" – "best" for what?

• Portable hard drives are often the "best" for price per TB. They make some noise, but not much. I think the largest ones top out at 5 TB.
• Desktop hard drives are "best" for capacity. You can get them in sizes up to about 20 TB. These drives are physically larger than others, and require their own power supply. They can be noisy. If you are doing heavy video editing, a desktop hard drive or a SSD may be more suitable than a portable hard drive would be.
• SSDs are "best" for speed and can be "best" for physical size. There are some that are roughly the size of a credit card but that hold 4 TB.
• Reliability varies. There is a saying: "All drives fail. It is not a matter of if, but of when." If your data is of any importance (e.g., it includes irreplaceable family photos), take heed of this saying and plan a backup strategy accordingly.

Tamlouie wrote:

I am still not sure on enclosures? From the link Allan Jones posted the enclosure costs a bit (and I did see OWC-Mercury brand suggested by high level help as I searched forums) so I assumed it was a stand alone ext. HD I could use.

You can see the pricing on the OWC site. For instance, there are a couple of OWC Mercury Elite Pro enclosures that hold a single desktop drive. One is USB-only. The other has USB + eSATA + FireWire 800 (which would be very useful for old Macs that only have USB 1.0 or 2.0), and costs a bit more.

If we drill down on the USB-only page (https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-mercury-elite-pro), we see that

• The enclosure, by itself, costs $47.99 USD
• Preassembled hard drives cost anywhere from $79.99 (1 TB) to $449.99 (20 TB)
• Preassembled 14 TB drives are cheaper than preassembled 12 TB ones. I don't know why. They just are.

If I surmise correctly , then buying such would mean the OWC company can use any various drives inside that some may consider substandard or just not to their liking.

Yes. OWC does give you more information than many external drive vendors do. If I click on "Learn more" for the 14 TB drive, then on "Specs", OWC says that the "Standard mechanism" is "(1) 14.0 Toshiba MG09ACA Series 7,200 RPM Enterprise Capacity Hard Disk Drive with 512 MB cache." They "reserve the right to replace or upgrade to equivalent or better components."

With most pre-assembled external drives, it is complete luck of the draw. If you buy a Western Digital drive, that drive probably has some Western Digital mechanism inside, but that's about all that you can say. Same for Seagate or any other brand. They're selling those drives into a market where very few people know technical specifications (beyond capacity, and 5400 rpm vs. 7200 rpm), but lots of people are looking at the price. So you're not always going to get the most high-end drive mechanism …

So if I buy that device as my ext.HD alone, it is kind of a "luck of the draw"? If that is so, wouldn't I be better off just buying a WDigital blue, red, or gold series, or even what Allan Jones uses "SATA 6G 7200 prm Western Digital Black Series drives"?

I'm not worried that OWC is going to pick unreliable drives. However, if I was getting a desktop hard drive, I think I'd have a preference for a mechanism that

• Used CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) – not SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording)
• Was not too noisy

I don't know, offhand, how the Toshiba mechanism stacks up in these regards.

It's also possible that if you bought enclosures from OWC, and internal drives somewhere else, you could wind up with a lower total price than if you had bought pre-assembled drives from OWC.

Personally I only use OWC (MacSales.com) external SSDs. They have a reputation for reliability and have an excellent Customer Support department. I have around 5 of them and am extremely satisfied with their performance.

They do have many to offer so I would contact their Customer Support and see which they recommend to meet your Mac model, work requirements and budget.

Just some more food for thought.

That WD passport drive is ok. I would rate its performance average. It's a bit slower than most drives but if you're only using it for storage of office docs & photos it will be fine. However, I would still steer you toward Lacie, OWC & G-Drive for better performance and long term reliability.

One more thing, if you get the WD drive, don't install any WD drive software/utilities; you won't need them and they can cause problems.

So-so - mostly bad reviews https://www.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/wd-elements-portable-usb-3-0-hdd?sku=WDBU6Y0050BBK-WESN, that too in the last 30 days alone. Stay away.

Hello Tosh! Long time no see. Still with 3 year warranties? Data sheets actually state speeds? Really? Really? Really 😁

I hold the opinion that the external backup drive for any desktop computer should be a desktop-class drive with an independent power supply. I have enjoyed amazing service with self=powered externals that held quality 3.5-inch drives; not so much with the cheap bus-powered drives that use 2.5 inch laptop drives.

I offer these recommendations for any external used on a Mac based on my Mac use, support or others' Macs, and some misteps in my youth:

1) Use Disk Utility to erase and reformat the new external drive to a pure Apple format. Your 2023 iMac uses APFS.

2) Do NOT install the drive software that comes with many "name-brand" external drives.

3) External SSDs are overkill for backups once the first backup is completed.

I've been through a litany of external drive options—and grief—since we started with Macs nearly 35 years ago. Having been burned by too many cheap drives, today I use only these enclosures:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-mercury-elite-pro

into which I install SATA 6G 7200 prm Western Digital Black Series drives.

Yes, more money, but I got over that quickly when I asked myself, "How much is your data worth?

+1👍 All my WD Black drives (both 3.5" & 2.5") have performed like champs. Never a problem. Some of them date back 12+ years and are still going strong (and yes, I do have backups, multiple backups). Ditto experience with all my OWC disk drive enclosures. I just retired all my old USB2/FW400/FW800 enclosures and have replaced them with new Mercury Elite Pro Dual w/3-Port Hub units - USB 3.2/10Gbps.

Tamlouie wrote:

Is the mercury elite pro a standalone backup hard-drive, or do I need to install extra as you did?

"Mercury Elite Pro" is a brand name that Other World Computing uses for several different kinds of drives and enclosures. Typically they will sell you either the enclosure by itself, or a complete unit that has a drive of their choice pre-installed.

Buying a pre-installed drive is a bit more convenient, but some people have strong preferences with regards to drive mechanisms. Buying just the enclosure gives you more choice over the selection of mechanism, e.g., you could avoid a particular brand that you think is unreliable, or look for a drive that doesn't use SMR (a technology that can hurt write performance).

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-storage

You [Allan Jones] and MartinB mention WD Black drives, but I am unfamiliar with this series (or what 2.5 or 3.5 drives even mean).

Western Digital is a hard drive manufacturer. Others include Seagate, Hitachi, and Toshiba.

Western Digital likes to use colors to name lines of hard drives. They have Black ("gaming"), Blue ("everyday use"), Red ("network-attached storage"), Purple ("video surveillance"), and Gold ("data center"). Although you can use any of the drives to store files, WD may have tweaked the designs according to intended applications. I would expect the Red ("NAS") and Gold ("data center") lines to include large-capacity drives that can withstand constant use, day-in and day-out. I would also expect that drives in those lines might be noisier than drives in some of the others - something to investigate before putting one on top of your desk.

https://www.westerndigital.com/solutions/hard-drives/internal-hdd

2.5" and 3.5" refer to the physical size of the hard drive mechanism. You find 2.5" drive mechanisms inside old notebook computers, and inside portable hard drives. Some of the larger-capacity 2.5" drives are too tall to fit inside of a standard 2.5" notebook drive bay, and so are used only in portable external drives.

The 3.5" drive mechanisms are "desktop" mechanisms. They're too big to put inside of a notebook, and they're too power-hungry to run off USB 2.0 or 3.0 power. So you find them in wall-powered "desktop" hard drives.

Is it a backup to the backup? The data that is most important for me are 5-6 thousand photos/videos, documents, applications that came with Mac, but no gaming to speak of. Pretty basic but important to keep safe.

Whether a drive stores "original" files, a backup, or a second or third backup, depends on how you choose to use it. To the computer, it's just storage.

As an aside, it looks like I may have made a poor choice when I was out of town at the Apple store buying the new Mac. I had asked for recommendations for external storage specifically for my MacAir laptop (since our old desktop hard-drive was working fine at the time) for removing photos in the cloud (and future photos) and was sold on Lacie 2TB as easy peasy. I followed instructions using disk utility, and formatted APSF, but I couldn't do much without downloading the Lacie Tool Kit. I am guessing that is the additional software so many in this string have said NOT to download, bummer. I was able to get my photos from iCloud loaded onto unit, but it will not take let me back up my laptop now or add anything more. There have been Apple updates and I'm thinking if understanding comments correctly that the Lacie is conflicting with it so it no longer works properly. Not sure what to even do with it now. Is there anything I can do to make the Lacie viable to use again and not have wasted $120?

If you reformatted the drive as APFS, you should have been able to use it without the LaCie ToolKit.

The LaCie Toolkit manual indicates that the software has four functions: "protecting your data with automatic backups", "managing security for Seagate and LaCie self-encrypting drives", "setting up RAID", and "quickly importing files from memory cards."

https://www.lacie.com/manuals/software/toolkit/introduction/

There are alternatives for backup (Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!) and for importing from memory cards.