Glenn Hardin

Q: What is a good backup drive

My Seagate Free Agent GoFlex Home backup cratered on me.  What is a good backup drive to replace it with?

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Aug 13, 2016 11:40 AM

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Q: What is a good backup drive

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  • by pokey b,

    pokey b pokey b Aug 15, 2016 1:51 PM in response to Glenn Hardin
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    Aug 15, 2016 1:51 PM in response to Glenn Hardin

    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.

  • by babowa,

    babowa babowa Aug 15, 2016 1:58 PM in response to pokey b
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    Aug 15, 2016 1:58 PM in response to pokey b

    Just out of curiosity: how many partitions do you have on that drive?

  • by pokey b,

    pokey b pokey b Aug 15, 2016 2:13 PM in response to babowa
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    Aug 15, 2016 2:13 PM in response to babowa

    One.

     

    Screen Shot 2016-08-15 at 4.10.58 PM.png

  • by babowa,

    babowa babowa Aug 15, 2016 2:43 PM in response to pokey b
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    Aug 15, 2016 2:43 PM in response to pokey b

    So how can you have both a TM backup and a clone on the same partition?

  • by pokey b,

    pokey b pokey b Aug 15, 2016 4:44 PM in response to babowa
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    Aug 15, 2016 4:44 PM in response to babowa

    Sorry, my wording was misleading. I didn't mean to imply they were on the same HD. I have the clone on a separate drive that is also used for nothing else.

  • by babowa,

    babowa babowa Aug 15, 2016 6:11 PM in response to pokey b
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    Aug 15, 2016 6:11 PM in response to pokey b

    Glad to hear that! I was about to recommend that you have separate partitions or drives.......

  • by Glenn Hardin,

    Glenn Hardin Glenn Hardin Aug 15, 2016 8:08 PM in response to woodmeister50
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    Aug 15, 2016 8:08 PM in response to woodmeister50

    I just ordered a Samsung t-1 500GB drive.  Thanks for all the input.  I decided a SSD was worth the price even if it wasn't the 1 TB capacity I wanted.  I do not have that much on my internal drive at this time anyway.

  • by pokey b,

    pokey b pokey b Aug 16, 2016 6:53 AM in response to Glenn Hardin
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    Aug 16, 2016 6:53 AM in response to Glenn Hardin

    If you have a conventional spinning hard drive as your internal boot drive you may want to consider using the SSD as your boot drive and using a conventional HD as your back-up drive where speed isn't too important. The boot-up time of an SSD is particularly impressive especially with one of the faster connections as mentioned by mattwithcats.

  • by Glenn Hardin,

    Glenn Hardin Glenn Hardin Aug 16, 2016 3:58 PM in response to pokey b
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    Aug 16, 2016 3:58 PM in response to pokey b

    What a great idea.  I am not sure how to proceed, but that is exactly what I will try to do!

  • by pokey b,

    pokey b pokey b Aug 16, 2016 6:13 PM in response to Glenn Hardin
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    Aug 16, 2016 6:13 PM in response to Glenn Hardin

    You can simply clone the original HD to the new SSD with software such as Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper, then reboot the computer and it will recognize that both drives are start-up capable drives and will ask you which one you want to boot from. You select the SSD then proceed to use the internal HD for other purposes like a back up drive or document storage. Before you undertake any of this though, be sure to have a reliable back up on a separate drive (for example an inexpensive USB drive) in case something goes wrong with the process. Good luck with it. I think you'll love it. Don't hesitate to start a new thread once you are ready to begin the process. There are many users here who have been thru the process and will have excellent advice on how to proceed.

  • by babowa,

    babowa babowa Aug 16, 2016 6:21 PM in response to Glenn Hardin
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    Aug 16, 2016 6:21 PM in response to Glenn Hardin

    I have two bootable clones each of Mavericks, Yosemite, and El Capitan - although none of them is meant to be the startup OS on a regular basis, I have them for two reasons: 1) is that with the current licensing agreement, you must sell your computer with the OS it came with - so I make a bootable clone fresh out of the box; it is never updated, but kept in duplicate if/when I want to sell it. Much quicker to put that back. And, 2), I use some movie editing software which is no longer supported; some work still with Yosemite, but one only works with Mavericks. So, when I start a new movie project, I do boot into one of my clones and work on the movie there. I do keep those clones updated so they are all as current as can be with security updates, etc. I use my regular 7200 rpm internal spinning drive or the same on the external hard drives where the clones are located.

  • by Glenn Hardin,

    Glenn Hardin Glenn Hardin Aug 17, 2016 4:55 AM in response to Glenn Hardin
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    Aug 17, 2016 4:55 AM in response to Glenn Hardin

    Wow, I wish I had learned some of this a long time ago.  I have been very disappointed a few times in the past when I accepted an update to find out later that some of my favorite software would no longer function in the new version.

     

    I am really impressed with the quality of the responses here!

  • by babowa,

    babowa babowa Aug 17, 2016 8:08 AM in response to Glenn Hardin
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    Aug 17, 2016 8:08 AM in response to Glenn Hardin

    Just for future reference: no Mac can be booted from an OS version earlier than what it came with, so you couldn't boot a brand new Mac that comes with El Capitan with anything older than that.

  • by jilllove55,

    jilllove55 jilllove55 Aug 17, 2016 6:25 PM in response to Glenn Hardin
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    Aug 17, 2016 6:25 PM in response to Glenn Hardin

    I went through this two years ago. I'm not an expert and much of this jargon gets lost on me, but as a photographer, I knew I needed a backup, and then a backup of my backup. So I did a lot of research and wished I would have bought SSDs now. But, I bought a Toshiba to use as an auto system backup with Time Machine. I use an external Nextar for storage of a lot of my raw files (I'm a photographer), and then I back those up with a Seagate using Carbon Copy Cloner to keep everything separated nicely. The Seagate stays in a fireproof safe until I run a monthly backup.

     

    It's probably crude by many standards but it works and it was something I could understand. Next time I'll be doing SSDs and something a helluva lot faster than USB, whatever that will be. Maybe the price of SSD and Thunderbolt will come down by then!

  • by steve626,

    steve626 steve626 Aug 17, 2016 10:18 PM in response to Glenn Hardin
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    Aug 17, 2016 10:18 PM in response to Glenn Hardin

    I have a different approach than some others mentioned here:

     

    Reliability is important with me, so I don't look for the lowest price, but instead look at:

     

    (1) the online reviews on sites with thousands of reviews such as Best Buy or Amazon, and look for 4000+ reviews with a rating of close to 5 stars. I don't pay attention to anecdotal accounts, e.g. I bought this drive and it failed after 1 month. All models have things like this, but I Iook for the ones where it is less likely from a statistical viewpoint.

     

    (2) manufacturer warranties, for instance most typically offer 2 years warranties, Western Digital offers 3 years warranties, which means they are standing behind those drives more than the others with their money.

     

    (3) Performance is important also but for me, reliability is more important.

     

    I have purchased more than 15 of the external bus powered Western Digital Passports in sizes ranging from 2 TB to 4 TB -- they are used to store massive amounts of digital photographs for a photographer I support, and they are also used for Time Machine and clone backups. I have not yet had one of these Western Digital Passports fail, although we've been using them for 5+ years. I buy them in pairs, always to keep a copy of everything on a single drive. I like to replace them after ~ 3 years, same as the WD warranty period.

     

    [Before I had the WD Passports, I used some other makes but they would sometimes fail after a year or two, sometimes I wondered about the integrity of the USB ports where the cable connects, but it's hard to say, once a drive acts questionably, I lose my trust in it and replace it.]

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