Recommendations for Highest Capacity Flash Dive for a 2020 iMac

NEVER EVER use a flash drive for backup they are unreliable and it's VERY simple to accidentally delete vital info, please use an external HD and Time Machine. Please read Back up your Mac with Time Machine , as for the External Hard Disk many experienced users on these forums prefer is the OWC Mercury Elite Pro due to its high reliability, reasonable cost and the support of the vendor.

If you are already using Time Machine (it seems you are) the use the External Hard Disk suggested. Also, if you want to create a bootable clone please use either SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Doing drag and drop backups does not make sense.

+1 to all that was posted by @rkaufmann87.

• Never use flash drives as a backup drive.

• Use a quality external HDD or SSD drive.

• Use a drive that is 2x-3x the total capacity of the internal drive + other connected drives you want to backup.

• Set up Time Machine and just let it do its thing. It will back up everything once, and then continue backing up new and changed files on a regular schedule. It's seamless and reliable.

I agree with rkaufmann87 in that flash drives are to be avoided. They are not reliable. What you want is a SSD. If budget is a concern you can try this setup. It's capable of 500 Mbs read and write:

If you need speed for operational reasons consider the OWC (MacSales.com) Envoy Pro Elektron or the OWC Envoy Pro FX. They will cost $80 to $140 more for the 2TB size than the setup in the screenshot. I have several of the adaptors but I don't need the speed that individual cases and their chips provide.

Just some food for thought.

balthus99 wrote:

I am not looking to use this instead of Time Machine or full backup but to back up some critical files periodically that I can keep in a safe deposit box that I do not want to back up to the cloud. I already do Time Machine.

If the files are important, don't put them on a USB flash drive. It would be better to get a portable bus-powered SSD, or portable bus-powered hard drive. Either is likely to be small enough to fit into a safety deposit box.

We understand you do not want to do a full backup, we are simply advising you that using a Flash Drive for any long term storage is a very poor idea and very very shortsighted. If you move forward with this idea, we anticipate your next post will be "how do I recover data that mysteriously disappeared from my flash drive?" We get these types of questions all the time on these forums, hence the recommendation to NOT use them.

Buy only from a trusted seller with a good return policy, as counterfeit flash storage is endemic.

There are some major resellers with issues around offering counterfeits, too.

Here is one tool to check for fake flash, and there are others:

https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction.html

And yeah, data storage on flash inevitably degrades and fails. Faster than any of us might prefer, too.

Another potential option is to robustly encrypt the data, and then upload it somewhere.

Any SanDisk flash drive of sufficient size will be fine.

Yes it would be. A 2020 iMac has 4 USB-A ports.

You're welcome.

"And for extra peace of mind, repeat the process with a second flash drive"

They don't trust it either.