best external hard drive for backup

Hello Rosina Lippi-Green,

These SSDs work well between Mac and iPad as long as you change the format to APFS (Apple File System). Note that the higher the transfer speed, the less time it takes for files to move between your device and the SSD (and the higher the price 🙂):

• Samsung T7 4TB (claimed transfer speed of 1,050MB/s) @ $280
• SanDisk Professional 4TB (claimed transfer speed of 3,000 MB/s) @ $390
• Samsung T9 4TB (claimed transfer speed of 2,000MB/s) @ $330

I have personally used the Samsung T7 1TB and the SanDisk Professional 2TB versions. I still have the Samsung T7 as it has a very commendable transfer speed which is even fast enough for me to store and run a slow Windows 11 virtual machine with it. I found that the SanDisk Professional was overkill (even for running virtual machines off of it), but your use case may require this much power.

To change the drive format to APFS (like I mentioned earlier) in order to make your drive compatible with both iPad, iPhone, and Mac, follow these steps before transferring files onto your external SSD:

• Plug your external SSD into your Mac
• Open up Disk Utility
• Select your external SSD in the side bar
• Select Erase in the upper right corner of the window
• Choose APFS or APFS (Encrypted) under Format (if you choose APFS (Encrypted), you can set a password to protect your SSD from unauthorized access; however, remember that if you forget the password, the information on your external SSD will be irretrievable!)
• Select Erase

Now your drive should be formatted correctly to the APFS format.

Take care. Let me know if you need any more help.

First, for the purpose of backups, SSDs are neither cost-effective, nor will they provide any real performance advantage over HDDs.

Second, if your intent is to only back up to a single drive, and your data is critical to you, then I strongly suggest that you reconsider your approach. That is, you should be backing up to a number of drives should one fail, get lost or stolen.

Third, what types of backups are you planning on doing? Only your Mac support Time Machine.

Finally, if you plan on doing these backups at one specific location: home, office, studio, etc, you may also want to consider utilizing a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. These are basically mini computers with built-in drives for storage/backups/other things. The most common brands are from Synology and QNAP.

On the other hand if you are determined to use a single external drive, is should provide the following, as a minimum:

• Have 2-3x the storage capacity of each of your Apple devices' storage taken together.
• Have USB-C connectors and support the USB 3 or 4 standard. Thunderbolt is not necessary.

1. You can’t backup an iPad directly onto an external drive. You can back it up onto the Mac and then manually move the backup onto the drive. Or just manually copy photos and files from the iPad to the drive.
2. For large amounts of data, an actual mechanical disc would be better and more economical per byte. Though really any drive will work but you’ll want reputable brands like Samsung or even OWC.

And yes, please note Phil0124's post. You will have to manually back up the data on your iPad to an external SSD (copy-and-pasting your files onto the drive); it will not work as an automatic backup disk. This goes for your Mac too if you plan to backup both your iPad and your Mac to the same drive. Your Mac needs to have an SSD specifically dedicated to Time Machine backup without anything else on it.

Anyways, just keep this in mind.

If those TM backups were made to a drive formatted in HFS+, then yes, you can copy them directly to another drive.

On the other hand, if they were made to a drive, formatted in APFS, then no they cannot. The only potential way to do so would be to do a low level disk duplication. It would be best to leave the old backups as archive copies, and just start a new TM backup set with your new drive.

@Rosina Lippi-Green

You're welcome! I'm glad I could help.

To transfer TimeMachine files between drives, I would follow this guide (it's from CleanMyMac; a credible source): https://cleanmymac.com/blog/time-machine-backup-new-drive

From my brief read, it seems to contain the information you're looking for.

With all due respect, knowledgeable Mac users consider Clean My Mac to be little better than malware. It does nothing useful to a Mac that isn’t done better by Mac OS, it slows down the Mac, and it breaks many apps. It’s primary purpose appears to be to provide revenue for its provider.

I’ve been seeing you posting, and overall I like your responses; I’m glad you have chosen to assist Apple Support Community users.

@Lawrence Finch,

Hello again! Hmm. Ok. I used Clean My Mac once and did have a rather dry experience. I deleted it in favor of DaisyDisk (I would rather have control over my files). I'm pretty sure that the link I provided does not require the user to download Clean My Mac. I looked over the instructions on that website to make sure that it provided relevant and safe information.

I appreciate your support. At this point I am trying to worry less about my ranking and worry more about the impact of what I say and the level of support I provide; after all, that's the most important thing.

Have a nice evening.

Happy holidays, and good luck!

@Rosina Lippi-Green,

I'm so glad we could help you out. It's always such a joy to provide people with the help they need and have a successful result.

Enjoy the holidays, and happy new year!