External Hard Drive for MacBook Air

oldruffneck wrote:

I am wanting to get a External Hard Drive, approximately 20TB for my MacBook Air.

This would be for periodic back ups of pictures and video's.

What is recommended nowadays?

I have used many SSD's and HDD's. Out of them all, I prefer WD (Western Digital). (Let me say again, WD is MY preference, not Apple's nor anyone else's.)

I found this WD HDD 18TB.

Seagate is another recommended brand. I would use them as well. I found this Seagate 16TB drive.

Hope this helps!

Dakota

I would suggest getting separate enclosure and drive.

With off the shelf ready to go drives, the most common failure mode is the enclosure electronics while the drive itself is perfectly fine. This is something I have encountered very often over the years with "ready to go" drives from Western Digital, Seagate, etc.

oldruffneck wrote:

Showing my age and lack of pooter technical capability now.... What does "separate enclosure and drive" mean?

He means that you can buy an internal drive mechanism, and an external enclosure to house it – then put those two pieces together, yourself, to make an external drive. This provides you with more control over the choice of enclosure and mechanism than you would have if you bought an off-the-shelf, preassembled drive.

OWC sells drives both ways.

Other World Computing – OWC Mercury Elite Pro

They sell preassembled "Hard Drive Models" with up to 20 TB of storage, but you can also buy a "DIY Enclosure" (no drive installed) and put in your own drive (e.g., a Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, or Toshiba that you already had, or that you purchased somewhere else).

oldruffneck wrote:

I am wanting to get a External Hard Drive, approximately 20TB for my MacBook Air.

This would be for periodic back ups of pictures and video's.

What is recommended nowadays?

At least two backup drives.

If something happens to your computer or main drive, the last thing you want to find out is that your only backup is bad.