Looking at my music/photo backups I realised my portable drive is 13years old so I want to add another (also have some bare disks but even older and my caddy isn’t recognised by my Apple silicon macs.)
the 2013 hard drive has done weird arsed double micro usb connector that was an oddity at the time and I’ve never seen on any other device. I’d like usb c thus time do I can connect directly to the macs but it seems all but the WD ultra and LaCie spinning disks still use that odd connection. And there are complaints online that the WD usb c socket is poor.
any experience here?
Ignore what I wrote here, completely misread what was being asked
I got this one recently
It came with a usb-c to usb-fancy-pants end and a usb-a to usb-fancy-pants end.
So far it seems ok
Several Samsung T7s in use chez slowoldman.
the price of SSD's has gone to the moon fwiw. the NAS worthy drives have also gone up massively
I have a 4GB Crucial SSD USB C drive, it's fast and tiny.
the 2013 hard drive has done weird arsed double micro usb connector that was an oddity at the time and I’ve never seen on any other device.
That's Micro USB 3.0. It is a standard, just not a very widely used one (I've only ever seen it on external hard drives).
I may be inclined to take comments online with a pinch of salt because no-one ever hits the Internet to talk about how there's nothing wrong with the USB socket on their hard drive. Maybe it'll fail if you're constantly ragging it about or bashing it side-on I guess. I don't think I've ever unplugged the cable from mine, it lives in a pouch on my desk when not in use.
I can't really advise further as you lost me at "my Mac doesn't recognise USB" I'm afraid. Off the top of my head I see no reason why a USB-C to uUSB3 cable wouldn't work but, eh, Apple.
I have a 4GB Crucial SSD USB C drive, it's fast and tiny.
Terabytes surely or have I stubbled back to the millennium?
the price of SSD's has gone to the moon fwiw. the NAS worthy drives have also gone up massively
I hadn't had any reason to look for a long time and JFC! Is old about 50 lightly used Samsung SSD's a while ago, I should have kept a hold of them and gone on a nice holiday with the proceeds! Maybe 4GB is worth bragging about again!
If you want something fairly simple but useful, just get some SATA SSD's and a USB-SATA cable. Then if you ever want to build a NAS, or put them inside a machine instead it's easy.
Samsung T7 here for similar. And the rugged version for when I go away and need to dump video files. Both just do the job, may not be the fastest but good value and seemingly robust.
I was just looking this morning to buy an extra backup drive. My preference would be for one with a USB-C socket so I can just use all the USB-C to C cables I've got, and not the weird flat plug that's on this one https://amzn.eu/d/01xeeM59
Spinning drive deemed preferable to SSD by many, and not just for cost reasons (Google the gory details).
That Toshiba from Amazon looks like it will do the job. Just accept the weird Micro usb connector and not fus about C-C. It's only going to sit in a drawer and come out every 6 months for a back up.
And that's a chunk cheaper than the other 4TB drives I was looking at.
It's only going to sit in a drawer and come out every 6 months for a back up.
Yeah, that being the case you're overthinking it. If it's a drive for intermittent backups then who cares if it blows up tomorrow.
It's hard to go wrong with Toshiba kit, TBH.
I’ve a few USB3 Toshiba drives ranging from 1TB to 4TB. They’re OK for backups.
for day to day use I like Samsung T7s.
I use all of them with a Mac with USB-C to USB3 and USB-C to USB-C cables respectively.
No need to go OTT on USB-C cables but make sure that they’re actually data cables. Often the very cheap ones are only useful for charging and have woeful data transfer rates.
IDK what back up software you’re using OP but carbon copy cloner makes it a simple process on Mac.
I've got an Akasa USB C caddy with some sort of WD 2.5" drive in it.
Also have an Akasa 3.5" caddy with a USB C to B cable, which is the Time Machine drive.
Edit: Startech is your friend for weird and wonderful cables. This might be the one you need to connect the double micro-USB thing https://www.startech.com/en-us/cables/usb31cub1m
IDK what back up software you’re using OP but carbon copy cloner makes it a simple process on Mac.
I think I've used that in the past to do a migration from a spinning disk to an SSD in an old intel MacBook, but why would I use anything other than time machine for regular backups?
Up to now I've only been backing up video/photos/mp3 to disk - all my other files are on iCloud or Google Drive (I've just moved all our dropbox stuff to iCloud to simplify things). I've set up a new Mac before from those and it works fine.
Just accept the weird Micro usb connector and not fus about C-C. It's only going to sit in a drawer and come out every 6 months for a back up.
That's good if you store it in the drawer with the cable. if not you will be hunting high and low for the weird cable every time you want to do a backup. or at least I would be.
Why would you not store them together? It's not like you're going to use the cable for anything else.
I've got one of those Toshiba drives and from a sample size of one it's been fine! Pretty sure it came with a velour bag so that's your cable storage issue solved... 😃
IDK what back up software you’re using OP but carbon copy cloner makes it a simple process on Mac.
I think I've used that in the past to do a migration from a spinning disk to an SSD in an old intel MacBook, but why would I use anything other than time machine for regular backups?
Up to now I've only been backing up video/photos/mp3 to disk - all my other files are on iCloud or Google Drive (I've just moved all our dropbox stuff to iCloud to simplify things). I've set up a new Mac before from those and it works fine.
you may want to check what a backup policy is. Having one copy of files in iCloud isn’t it. Having a copy of photos on your Mac and a backup copy on one external hard drive, which may be at the same location, gets closer to backing up
Time Machine relies on sparse bundles which aren’t always well kept by the software. While it looks cool and works fairly well, its methods have a few drawbacks for ‘proper’ backups and restoring that products like CCC avoid.
It’s good that you’ve tested the ability to restore files from your current backup approach. It worked. This is much better than many folks do.
you may want to check what a backup policy is
I’m rusty, but I actually used to do DR/it security professionally. Photos are irreplaceable. MP3 collection would be a huge hassle (lots of mixes, radio shows, rarities that aren’t on Spotify).
Full copy on the Mac.
Photos in iCloud (offsite)
backed up to hard drive (and have always had >1 so there’s an older backup if current disk fails)
As I say, I’m rusty - it’s 20+ years ago it was my job - and I was strategy/policy rather than execution so the details of software weren’t my bag even then
Time Machine relies on sparse bundles which aren’t always well kept by the software. While it looks cool and works fairly well, its methods have a few drawbacks for ‘proper’ backups and restoring that products like CCC avoid.
What does “not always well kept” quantify as? How high is the risk? Would it affect a single copy or all? I’ve always been a pragmatist- better to have something that’s quick and easy so actually used that something with more friction.
What does “not always well kept” quantify as? How high is the risk? Would it affect a single copy or all? I’ve always been a pragmatist- better to have something that’s quick and easy so actually used that something with more friction.
Time Machine now is certainly better than it used to be. I now only see my TM backups fail and need starting over about once per year. TM is pretty neat.
I find CCC helps as it maintains the directory structures in its backups and they are in a directly readable form. That plus its scheduling and reminders make it neat for off site backups and multiple destination backups. The option to not erase older backup files to clear space like TM does is both a blessing for its retention and a curse for its potential to keep really old files that have been removed for good reason from the source.
I agree with you that a low friction approach that works is better than a faff that doesn’t get done. It sounds like your approach is robust and works well.
enjoy picking your new drives!
If it's a drive for intermittent backups then who cares if it blows up tomorrow.
Only true if you have >1 backup
Only true if you have >1 backup
A backup plus the original is >1 😁 You're correct of course, it is possible that you could lose your original data and the backup simultaneously, but you'd have to be very unlucky.
The risk here as that the drive has sat in a drawer for months without ever being tested and then turns out to be bad when it's retrieved to do a restore. Disaster Recovery testing should be a thing but honestly it's so rare that people even do backups at all that DR rarely gets a chance to be mentioned. I've seen it done where backups were unsuccessful due to user error but no-one realised until they actually needed it.
Funny story actually. It was some arcane standalone system in a branch office. The backup system installed by Fred Flintstone had the user backing up weekly to a stack of floppy disks. The first time I knew this abomination even existed was when they called asking for help restoring data. To cut a baffling story short, they'd worked out that when prompted to insert the next disk it still "worked" without them actually swapping the disks, so they'd optimised their routine by spending every Friday afternoon backing up a multi-part .zip file by continually overwriting a single disk.
(It actually got worse. The purpose of the floppy backup was to upload data to an FTP server. So, once she'd created her backup disk she then had to feed them back into a separate program which read the disks in order to create the upload. I realised that this solution had probably evolved over time and that the floppies were a wholly unnecessary step, so I rewrote all the scripts just to spit out the data and then FTP it off. I called her back all proud of myself to walk her through the new process, thinking she'd be overjoyed at having literally half a day's work distilled into about ten minutes. Every time I said "ok, now select this..." she'd reply "and I put my disk in now do I?" No, we don't need disks any more. Multiple times over I had to tell her. I realised in retrospect that the backup was probably her easy Friday afternoon wind-down and I'd just robbed her of it. Que sera.)
... I've just remembered a bit more about that tale.
The start of this saga was a co-worker asking me if we could order some floppy disks. To which my response was both "no" and "what the actual frank does anyone want floppy disks for?" So I rang the user to find out.
She'd been maintaining her magic one-disk backup solution for ages, but ironically hadn't realised that once used they could be reused. She had stacks of disks going back months, years even. Periodically she'd run out of blanks, call IT, we'd go "yeah sure" and send out a couple of 10-packs, then she'd be good for another six months.
