In my household we have

MacBook Pro (Latest model)
Iphone 7
Iphone 6s
Iphone 5c
2 x Ipad Mini
1 x Ipad

I use the icloud to back them up normally but i just use the minimum free storage. I hate paying monthly for anything so i don’t want to upgrade the storage.

Anyhow, the MacBook is taking over from a windows laptop which had 1tb of storage and the MacBook only has 512GB. I don’t particularly want to fill it up on day 1 with pics and videos etc.

I have been looking at these external HDrives which either plug in or some which even work wirelessly. Has anyone got any recommendations upto £100?

TBH i just want something i can dump 500gb of Pictures and videos onto. I then want all the apple products to then send their backups to this external HD. If it would automatically also take all the pictures etc my kids and wife and put them in a personal folder for them that would be great.

Am i asking the earth?
Is this something i can go into the apple shop and get them to setup for me?

Thinking about it, could the old laptop be setup to do the storage job? Can the iphones be setup to backup to it?

I use a time capsule. It has been faultless. My last MacBook pro drank a pint of water. When the replacement arrived, it took about half an hour to fully restore from the time capsule and all been fine since.
It doesn’t work like an external drive in the way that you can pick bits from it. I manage files by deleting from the lap top. If I need it in the future I go into the time capsule and restore the files I need.

A backup needs more than one copy. A backup in the same location as the devices isn’t a backup. Cloud and external nas drive are a good combination. The monthly costs are very low in reality and will get less.

All fine unless you have a house fire or someone pours water all over your time capsule.

£6.99 a month for 1TB in the cloud.

Time Machine here using a cheap external USB 1Tb drive (Seagate Backup Plus) to backup the MacBook Pro.
Other devices (well my iPhone) sync with the MacBook Pro and are backed up to it.

The chances of the Time Capsule being filled with water at the same time as the mac are slim enough for me. I don’t live in a flood risk area

A backup in the same location as the devices isn’t a backup

Well, it plainly is. If the primary device fails (most common mode) then you do have a backup, where you most need it (at home, next to the new primary device).

However, if you’re worried about all your photos burning in a fire or drowning in a flood, then an offsite backup is a very good idea.

The chances of the Time Capsule being filled with water at the same time as the mac are slim enough for me.

Fire, theft, gas explosion, power surge….

iPhones/iPads can either back up to iCloud automatically, or you can do a backup via iTunes (running on a Windows PC or Mac) by plugging it in. You could then choose to store those backups on the external or wireless HD.

Personally, I’d just use iCloud for device backups. You get 5GB per Apple ID so assuming each person has their own account that’ll be more than enough for everything except photos. 79p a month gets you 50GB otherwise.

For photos – you’d have to plug in to the Mac and copy photos off to the hard drive too. If you’re averse to paying, then Google Photos lets you upload as many photos as you like, although their free offering will do some compression. Not bad as a free extra place to store it all, just in case. You can run the app on each device and it can upload automatically.

Apple’s solution for iOS device backup is iCloud, and you can have a couple of terabytes of storage on there if you’re willing to pay for it. Step outside of that and you’re into cobbling together other stuff.

If you have Amazon Prime you’ve got unlimited photo storage & an element of other storage for videos etc – these can be upgraded to their unlimited ‘cloud’ for £50-60 a year I think.

We have a NAS drive which is set up as a Raid 1 server (2 mirrored drives) attached to our router. It takes all our photos, videos, music & media from all our devices plus Time Machine back ups for the iMac & MacBook. Find it works really well & Jr no longer has an excuse for accidentally losing/deleting his homework – remote access means he can even get at his files from school.

Google photo is free unlimited storage if you take a hit on file size.

Time machine onto an Airport Extreme along with 200GB iCloud @ £2.49 per month.
Nowhere filling either
No point messing about trying to cobble other stuff at that price.
Totally integrated and autonomous.

I have a little Samsung drive £50 for 1tb setup as my Time Machine Device

Backing up phones / ipads on Mac does use storage storage, easy to have a 64gb phone and backup will be 30-40 gb. The Mac is pretty good at managing this and you can delete those not needed (eg when you change a phone the old backup can be removed – the Mac doesn’t know you’ve sold/broken the phone 😉 ) I do them on my Mac Mini but it has 750gb of internal storage. You can configure Time Machine to ignore certain directories

Good points made above about house fire, some cloud storage is a good idea. I have Google Drive for essential documents and Flickr for photos (1tb free) but to be honest a bit lazy about updating that as I turned off the auto update. For another £50 you can have a second drive you keep out of the house.

The chances of the Time Capsule being filled with water at the same time as the mac are slim enough for me. I don’t live in a flood risk area

Hebden Bridge resident here. And I still would worry more about the kids wrecking it.

I have far too many cloud accounts (OneDrive, Dropbox, iCloud, Google Photos) and should probably amalgamate but it works for me and him and her and them and how it all works with other devices and stuff.