Backup drive for new MacBook Air (2025) for basic user

Pretty much any drive out there should work fine. A 2TB or even a 4TB SSD should work fine.

Time Machine will backup your Photo Library if using the Photos app, or folders in your user profile that may contain photos.

Good, know, and supported brands of drives include Samsung, WD, Seagate and Sandisk, PNY, Adata.

for example:

click here ➜ Samsung 2TB SSD - Amazon.com

or here ➜ Crucial 2TB SSD - Amazon.com

or here ➜ Seagate SSD 2TB - Amazon.com

or here ➜ Sandisk 2TB SSD - Amazon.com

etc...

I exclusively use 2-TB Crucial X-series (X8, X9) SSD drives for Time Machine backups on all of my 1-TB Macs. These are a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (1050 MB/s) drives in a palm size container that comes with a comparable cable. They come formatted as exFAT, and I reformat them to Apple APFS as that is required by Time Machine now.

I have been using these drives for several years without issue and that should speak to reliabililty.

I have a stack of Samsung T7 SSDs (2 TB and 4 TB), some of which are used for TM backups. Highly recommend.

Personally, I'd stay away from SanDisk, they had issues with their drives failing some time back.

Ranpaeral wrote:

I wouldn't know how to reformat the drive, do any of them already come formatted so that they'd work with Time Machine right out of the box?

No. You would need to mount the drive and launch Apple's Disk Utility. Select the manufacturer's name in the Disk Utility sidebar, and then click Erase in application tool bar. Give the drive an arbitrary name (e.g. TM_Sequoia). The format will be APFS for the entire drive.

Disk Utility User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Once the drive is formatted, you can also run Disk Utility First Aid on it and then exit Disk Utility. In System Settings > General > Time Machine. Click the + symbol to add the still mounted drive to Time Machine and under Options… set your Backup Frequency to Automatically Every Hour.

In System Settings > Contol Center : Menu Bar Only section, set Time Machine Show in Menu Bar. Now you can see when it runs by clicking that menu bar icon for Time Machine, force a backup, or even open the Time Machine Restore panel to retrieve something.

I recently bought a new M4 Macbook Pro for travel and bought this new backup drive from OWC:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy

It's tiny, and the cable was included. Quite unobtrusive in use.

dialabrain wrote:

FWIW, I have SanDisk SSDs on all my Macs & my G/F's Mac and have had no problems. All drives will fail eventually, regardless of brand.

Yes, they will all fail eventually. But I was not making a generic reference, but rather this one:

https://petapixel.com/2023/11/13/sandisk-ssd-issues-caused-by-major-hardware-weaknesses-report/

I'm using a couple of Crucial X9 Pros – one to back up my internal SSD; another to provide extra storage; and an assortment of portable USB hard drives.

If you are thinking of using one of the Crucial X9 Pro drives as an external startup disk for your Mac, get one of the "for Mac" versions. I've read that the "PC" versions may need a firmware update to work as startup disks for Macs; and the last time I looked, the firmware updater only ran on Windows! If you're just using them for data storage, you can buy the "PC" versions and reformat them using APFS (as I did with mine).

None will come formatted for Time Machine. Connect the new drive, open Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility, select the drive (top level) in the sidebar on the left, then click Erase. Use GUID map, APFS format (no need to encrypt since you can —and should— choose that option in the Time Machine settings). Once complete, the disk should mount and you can select it as a new destination in Time Machine settings (that may be preempted by macOS asking if you want to use the new disk for TM).

If you need something that is fast, easy to carry with you (if necessary) and small give the 2 TB version of this setup consideration:

I have the 4 TB disk with adaptor as the Time Machine drive for my Mac Mini M4 with 5 external SSDs. It has a 500 MBs read and write speed. Except for the first full backup subsequent backups take less than a minute unless there's been a system update.

FWIW, I have SanDisk SSDs on all my Macs & my G/F's Mac and have had no problems. All drives will fail eventually, regardless of brand.

dialabrain wrote:

You can't always believe what you read.

True. And perhaps SanDisk will lose all three of the class action lawsuits filed against them over this issue. To me, buying a drive from them isn’t worth the risk when there are many excellent alternatives. YMMV.

Ranpaeral wrote:

I wouldn't know how to reformat the drive, do any of them already come formatted so that they'd work with Time Machine right out of the box?

Highly unlikely.

You can use Disk Utility to format it, or even Time Machine will format them for you when you select them during the Time Machine setup process.

click here ➜ Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support