What is a good backup drive

I use WD My Passports on x6 macs without issue for Time Machine backups and CCC clones, these are bus powered drives.

I have also been using a WD My Book World Edition II nas drive but have just swapped over to a Synology Diskstation in after using this brand at work as a file server.

Not sure where you are from, but highly recommend OWC Mercury Pro hard drives.

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-storage?_ga=1.105694979.1842276781.1463 059444

OR

These Thunderbolt drives

https://eshop.macsales.com/search/thunderbolt+bus-powered

Or

Have you considered an SSD in a USB 3.0 of Thunderbolt enclosure?

Some good responses here, but I have a different point of view.

Most backup drives are fine, but there are two cardinal considerations: (1) every HD has a real chance of going bad and (2) portable use can drastically affect a drive. In other words, get a good quality drive, and don't move it around. I like a G-Drive like this:

My favorites are either the full size or portable size (Mini) versions of these:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/external-storage?_ga=1.78578705.446471106.147114 1423

You can use most any drive as long as you format it Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with the GUID Partition scheme; no need to use any included software as it is not necessary and may cause a problem (as it has on past versions of WD drives). WD drives are ok, but they are known to use cheap enclosures, so I prefer to pay a bit more for a quality enclosure. G Drives are good as well.

Unlike one of the other posters, I have had nothing but issues over the

years with WD externals. The actual disk drives themselves were okay

but the enclosure electronics would fail. From less than a year to only

a couple years.

Sorry to hear that - I actually had two drives late last year which kept causing the iMac to malfunction (shut off and/or not waking up); it was determined that the cause was Apple having made changes in the OS which the chip in the enclosure was not compatible with (Apple confirmed this). I escalated my concerns with them and found that they were trying very hard to make them compatible by testing various enclosures/chips. They ultimately replaced both of my drives with brand new ones and I haven't had a problem since.

I do like the Western Digital My Passport drive, a little fragile, but very inexpensive.

1 terabyte - $70, 2 - $90...

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/915404/Western-Digital-My-Passport-Ultra-E xternal/

I've had my WD NAS for about 7 years (only reason I've moved to Synology is to Plex can run on it), the Passports are only used for TM so never really leave the desk, although I have carried two in my bag for years without issue.

But like with every brand you will get lemons

I like your point. Aside from looking for something high quality, I do love the design of the G Drive. I'm rapidly running into issues where I have no free space on my externals (usually 1TB), so I need to look into a 3, 4 or 5TB option.

In order of interface speed...

USB 2.0

Firewire 400

Firewire 800

USB 3.0

and fastest, Thunderbolt..

I have FireWire 400 drives, you need a 4 pin to 6 pin cable to plug it into a FireWire 800 port...

Considering today's file sizes in general, I wouldn't recommend or use anything less than FW800 - even that is quite slow compared to USB 3. I have one hard drive left with FW 800 and it takes a full 20 minutes longer (60 min. vs. 40 min) to do a clone.

FireWire 800 / USB 3.0 enclosure...

Open box discount...

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MES3F0GBOB/

Stay away from Western Digital Red or Green drives until the 8 second idle time is fixed...

If you want to consider the open box drive, I'd suggest you check with OWC first to see if the issue with the Oxford 944 chipset has been fixed. That was the chipset I had a problem with earlier this year and this was part of their email to me back in January:

This is a known issue with both the Oxford 944 and JMicron 355 chipset in 10.9 or later. Unfortunately, we have not received a fix for the issue from Oxford or JMicron. We've also submitted a bug report to Apple and have not heard back from them either.


Just one thing to note, of paramount importance is reliability when

it comes to backup.

Although nothing can be 100% guaranteed to work, your backup has to

be the most reliable item in your system, otherwise what is the point. So,

going cheap is not the smart thing to do.

All the inexpensive portable drives are designed with the lower reliability HDD

that the manufacturers. That is why they are cheap.

The best approach is to purchase a quality enclosure with proven track record

and install a higher reliability drive. All manufacturers have multiple tiers of

product quality and reliability, as indicated by their warranty and MTBF.

Your backup is like insurance. You hope you never have to use it, but your

agent needs to be there at a moments notice.

About a year ago I purchased a Seagate 4 TB USB drive at my local Apple store. It came from the factory preset for the Apple OS, properly formatted for OS X, ready to plug and play. I use it exclusively for Time Machine back ups but also keep a Super Duper! HD clone. Both are a slow (but work fine) on my old Mac as it only has USB2 ports.