external HDD for MacBook backups

Matthew

Matthew

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Matthew
I have a new MacBook pro and and looking for some ideas on using an external HDD for backup.

I'm not really familiar with it all, but my understanding is that TimeMachine is the OS X built-in backup utility. It requires a Mac formatted HDD, and pretty much runs whenever the selected external drive is connected.

Is this really all there is to it? I can get a WD, Seagate, or other, external HDD, make sure it's Mac formatted, plug it in, setup Time Machine, and then let it work? Is there a difference between any brand external HDD and the Apple Time Capsule (wireless), other than price?
 
Yep, it really is that simple. Plug in drive, format it for Mac, and tell Time Machine to use it. Done.

Time Capsule is nice but spendy, there's stuff out there that will pretend to be a Time Capsule on the network if you don't want to pay Apple's prices. Many of the consumer NAS devices will play that game.
 
Jeffythequick said:
:yeahthat:
:yeahthat:Exactly... I use those on my server (standard USB hard drives) and the rest of the computers on the network back up to the server.

A cheapy hard drive (I'd get one of those USB 1TB ones that don't need a power supply for a MacBook) works perfectly!
Click to expand...
The cheapy kind was what I was looking at, but it seemed too easy. Thanks.
 
Got a 1TB WD for about $53. I remember when a 20MB went for $200.

Any advantage/disadvantage to encrypting the TimeMachine backup when the HDD is already encrypted?
 
Matthew said:
Got a 1TB WD for about $53. I remember when a 20MB went for $200.

Any advantage/disadvantage to encrypting the TimeMachine backup when the HDD is already encrypted?
Click to expand...

The backup isn't if you don't turn that on. It unencrypts in the Mac and if you don't encrypt the backup it's just a "sparse file" (an Apple made up term for a single file that holds an entire filesystem inside of it) that contains all your files unencrypted. Any Mac or Linux box can mount the sparse file and read everything inside it.
 
I have had great luck with the miniStack line from OtherWorldComputing/MacSales.com. VERY quiet, decent performance, and super-reliable. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ministack

Last time around I got a 3TB and partitioned it into 1TB for TimeMachine, 1TB for "Media" and 1TB for "Misc". But they've got sizes from 500GB-6TB.
 
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