I have recently purchased a 27" iMac with a 1TB Fusion Drive. I have been advised by Apple support that a 500GB HDD is sufficient for this purpose. I had thought that a larger drive would be necessary
I'd appreciate any thoughts on this and recommendations for an appropriate USB 3 HDD for this purpose.
Thanks
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
You need a drive at least twice the capacity of your hard drive if you want to avoid really frequent needs to erase your backup and begin again.
You can use almost any available external hard drive. You can even make your own, which I would recommend. I would, however, be carefull about certain Seagate and Western Digital external drives some of which do not work well with Macs. I would suggest checking out OWC who specialize completely in Mac support.
Thanks for your confirmation of my suspicions re the HDD size. The guy I spoke to at Apple was helpful but didn't appreciate the ongoing use of Time Machine. He said that 500MB would be sufficient for a 1TB HDD. I'll go for a 2TB USB 3 external drive though not necessarily from OWC as I am on the other side of the 'pond'. Thanks for your help.
Be sure to get something that is stated as being Mac compatible. Seagate and Western Digital do make external drives, but not all are Mac compatible. Toshiba has a very cheap USB external that should also be avoided.
Think I'll probably go for this one which is on the Apple website shop but look around for a better price:
LaCie 2TB Porsche Design P'9233 USB 3.0 Desktop Hard Drive
It seems to have good revues.
I find these the most reliable:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB
Having been led down many a dark and thorny path by name-brand external drives, I now buy only the OWC versions. None have given any problems
Any Recommendations for a HDD for Time Machine
