Best Backup Drives For Mac

Best External Hard Drive For Macbook …
Best Backup Drives For Mac 2018

Back Up to an External Drive: If you have an external USB hard drive, you can just back up to that drive using your computer’s built-in backup features. On Windows 10 and 8, use File History. On Windows 7, use Windows Backup.

Most people don’t think about backing up their Mac until after disaster strikes; by then, it’s too late. Don’t let this happen to you. Instead of waiting for that sinking feeling when you realize your Mac isn’t going to boot, or the terrifying sound of your hard drive screeching to a halt, be proactive. Check out all the possibilities, make a decision, and then back up your data.

Time Machine - Backing Up Your Data Has Never Been So Easy

What We Like

Included as part of macOS.
Very easy to set up and use with a simple interface.
Easy ability to recover single files or folders from backups.

What We Don't Like

Backups are not bootable.
Automated management deletes old backups as space is needed.
Limited ability to customize backup processes.

Time Machine, the utility included with Leopard may be one of the easiest backup utilities to set up and use. It makes backing up your data so easy you may forget that it’s there, working quietly in the background, automatically backing up your data. Time Machine also offers one of the best interfaces for recovering a specific file or folder from a backup. 'Backing Up Your Data Has Never Been So Easy' provides a step-by-step guide to configuring Time Machine and creating your first backup.

How to Use Two or More Backup Drives With Time Machine

Using multiple backup drives with Time Machine is a great way to gain increased reliability in your backup system. Time Machine supports multiple backup drives, and with the advent of OS X Mountain Lion, it's even easier to add two or more drives to your backup system.

This guide will show you how to set up Time Machine to use more than one drive as a backup destination. The guide also explains how to use Time Machine to create off-site backups.

Moving Time Machine to a New Hard Drive

At some point, your Time Machine drive will probably need to be replaced. This may be because it's size is now smaller then you need, or the drive is exhibiting problems. No matter what the reason, chances are you will want to save your old Time Machine data and move it to your new drive. This article provides step-by-step instructions for copying your data to your new Time Machine drive.

How Do You Back Up FileVault User Accounts With Time Machine?

Time Machine and FileVault will work fine together, however, there are some niggling bits you need to be aware of. First, Time Machine will not back up a FileVault-protected user account when you are logged into that account. This means that a Time Machine backup for your user account will only occur after you log off.

Using the Finder to Access FileVault Backups on a Time Machine Drive

Time Machine uses a compelling interface to restore files and folders. But what happens when the file you want to restore is located within a backed-up FileVault image?

The answer is that individual files and folders in an encrypted FileVault image are locked away and cannot be accessed using Time Machine. But Apple provides another application that can access individual FileVault data; it's called the Finder. Now, this isn't some backdoor that allows just anyone to access encrypted files; you still need to know the user account password to gain access to the files

Free Mac Backup Software

If you're not sure which backup app to use with your Mac then why not take a look at our collection of free Mac backup software.

These backups app all include either a long term demo capability that allows you to fully test and evaluated the app, or is some cases the app is outright free.

Carbon Copy Cloner 4: Tom's Mac Software Pick

What We Like

Greater control over the backup process.
Ability to create bootable backups and restore entire hard drive.
Fast backup speed.
Scheduled incremental updates keep backups current.

What We Don't Like

Setup can be more complicated for novice users.
Somewhat slow restore process.
No encryption or compression for backups.

Apple’s Time Machine is a great backup application, but it does have its faults. Perhaps its biggest fault is that it doesn’t provide an easy way to restore an entire hard drive. That’s Carbon Copy Cloner where comes in. One of the go-to applications that Mac techs have been using for years,Carbon Copy Cloner allows you to create a bootable copy of your startup drive that is essentially a clone, indistinguishable from the original.

Once you clone your startup drive, you can use the clone to boot your Mac at any time, should your original startup drive fail. Carbon Copy Cloner also offers additional backup capabilities that you may find useful.

SuperDuper 2.7.5 Review

What We Like

Quicker backup restore speed.
Software is free.
Interface is minimal and straightforward.

What We Don't Like

No ability to select which files to backup and which not to.
Slow backup speed.
No backup encryption or incremental file backup options.

SuperDuper 2.7.5 may be one of the easiest backup tools to use to create a startup clone. Like Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper’s main goal is to create completely bootable clones of your startup drive.

Unlike other cloning tools, SuperDuper provides multiple ways of creating a clone, including the very popular Sandbox method. Sandboxes are clones designed to isolate your system for the purpose of trying out new software or beta software. Sandboxes protect your system from unruly beta applications, plug-ins, or drivers, preventing them from wreaking havoc on your Mac.

Back Up Your Startup Disk

Apple’s Disk Utility includes the ability to create a bootable backup of your startup drive. Although it’s a bit more difficult to use than some third-party backup applications, Disk Utility can create and restore data from onehard drive to another.

‘Back Up Your Startup Disk’ is a step-by-step guide to using the built-in capabilities of Disk Utility to create a bootable backup of your startup drive.

External Hard Drive - Build Your Own External Hard Drive

External hard drives are a great choice for backup destinations. For one thing, they can be shared by multiple Macs. If you have an iMac or one of Apple’s notebooks, an external hard drive may be your only real choice for backups.

You can purchase ready-made external hard drives; just plug them into your Mac and you’re ready to start backing up your data. But if you have a little free time and the inclination (plus a screwdriver), you can build a custom external hard drive, using the Focus on Macs ‘External Hard Drive - Build Your Own External Hard Drive’ step-by-step guide.

Before You Buy an External Hard Drive

Now that you’re ready to back up your Mac, you may need an external hard drive to serve as a backup destination. As an alternative to building your own, you might prefer to buy a ready-made drive. External hard drives are a great choice for backups, and something that I highly recommend for this purpose.

There are things to consider and decisions to make before you part with your hard-earned cash. ‘Before You Buy an External Hard Drive’ covers many of the options to consider before you make a purchase.

It's a Great Time to Go for a Drive

In an era when Apple charges 99 cents per month for 50GB of iCloud storage and Google offers 100GB of free storage for two years with the purchase of a new Chromebook, mainstream external hard drives might appear less essential than they once were.

But modern external drives are faster, more stylish, and often more durable than their counterparts from a few years ago. They're ever cheaper and more capacious, too. For about $50, you can add a terabyte of extra storage to your laptop or desktop by just plugging in a USB cable.

Choosing an external drive isn't as simple as buying the most expensive one you can afford, however. The capacity and type of storage mechanism are the two most important factors to consider, and each one will increase or decrease the cost dramatically depending on your needs. Other factors include the physical size of the drive (is it designed to be carted around or to sit on your desk?), how rugged it is, the interface it uses to connect to your PC, and even what colors it comes in. This guide will help you make sense of all the options. Here are the key questions to ask as you shop.

The Need for Speed: Hard Drive or SSD?

Solid-state drives (SSDs) have fewer moving parts than traditional hard drives, and they offer the speediest access to your data. Unlike a conventional disk-based hard drive, which stores data on a spinning platter or platters accessed by a moving magnetic head, an SSD uses a collection of flash cells—similar to the ones that make up a computer's RAM—to save data.

Just how much faster is it to access data stored in flash cells than those stored on a spinning platter? Typical read and write speeds for consumer drives with a single spinning platter are in the 100MBps to 200MBps range, depending on their USB interface and whether they spin at 5,400rpm (more common) or 7,200rpm (more expensive and less common). External SSDs offer twice that speed and sometimes much more, with typical results on our benchmark tests in excess of 400MBps. Practically speaking, this means you can move gigabytes of data (say, a 4GB feature-length film, or a year's worth of family photos) to your external SSD in seconds rather than the minutes it would take with an external spinning drive.

Not only is it faster to read and write data stored in flash cells than those stored on a spinning platter, but it's also safer. Because there is no spinning platter or moving magnetic head, if you bump the SSD while you're accessing its data, there is no risk that your files will become corrupted and unreadable.

While external SSDs are now readily available and cheaper than they were a few years ago, they're not a complete replacement for spinning drives. Larger external drives designed to stay on your desk or in a server closet still mostly use spinning drives, taking advantage of their higher capacities and lower prices compared with SSDs.

Physical Size Matters: Desktop or Portable Drive?

If you have a large photo or video collection—perhaps you are a photo or video editor, or maybe a movie buff—you'll likely need several terabytes of space in which to store it. So your best option is a desktop-class drive. We define these as having one or more spinning-platter drives inside and requiring its own dedicated power cable. Of course, in this scenario, your files are going to have to stay at your desk.

Best External Hard Drive For Macbook …

A desktop drive with a single platter mechanism inside will typically use a 3.5-inch drive inside and will be found in capacities up to 12TB, and most are roughly 5 inches tall and 2 inches wide. In addition to storing large media collections, these drives can also serve as inexpensive repositories for backups of your computer's hard drive that you schedule using either the software that came with the drive or a third-party backup utility.

The next size up for consumer desktop drives is about the same height but twice as wide to accommodate additional drive mechanisms in the chassis, such as with the Western Digital My Book Duo. These larger drives are more expensive but also much more capacious; the highest-capacity current models employ two drives for up to 20TB of storage. Note: In the case of these and single-platter-drive products, you're not meant to swap out the drive or drives inside.

The largest desktop drives are often much, much larger than the first two categories, so large that you'll want to stick them under your desk or in a dedicated server closet. They're mostly intended for professional use in editing studios, surveillance control rooms, and the like. Their defining characteristic is the ability to swap drives in and out easily, so they provide quick access to the drive bays at the front of the device. Most are sold without drives included, so you can install any drive you want (usually, 3.5-inch drives, but some support 2.5-inchers). Their total storage capacities are usually limited only by their number of available bays and the capacities of the drives you put in them.

At the other end of the physical-size spectrum are portable drives, some of which now use an SSD inside instead of a spinning platter to save space, as well as to increase throughput and durability. These drives can be truly tiny, weighing just a few ounces and with their largest sides measuring less than 3 inches long, like with the Samsung Portable SSD T5. Others use spinning platters and are a bit larger, like the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive, but they still fit easily in a purse or even a coat pocket. Portable drives get their power from the computer to which you connect them, through the interface cable, so there's no need for a spare wall outlet.

Need Redundancy or Extreme Speed? Consider a RAID

If you buy a larger desktop drive with two or more spinning platters, you'll almost certainly have the ability to configure the drive as a RAID array using included software. Depending on which RAID level you choose, you can prioritize capacity, speed, or data redundancy, or some combination thereof.

A collection of spinning drives configured with a RAID level designed for faster access can approximate the speeds of an SSD, while you should consider a drive with support for RAID levels 1, 5, or 10 if you're storing really important data that you can't afford to lose. Hit the link above for explanation of the strengths of each RAID level.

What Interface Should You Look For?

How an external drive connects to your PC or Mac is second only to the type of storage mechanism it uses in determining how fast you'll be able to access data. Unfortunately, these connection types are constantly changing, and the internet is littered with outdated references to legacy interface types such as eSATA and FireWire.

Right now, the fastest mainstream connection type is Thunderbolt 3, which is handy assuming you have a newer laptop or desktop with a Thunderbolt 3 port. All late-model Apple laptops have them, but they're much scarcer on Windows machines. This interface uses a USB Type-C connector and offers blazing throughput of 40GBps. As an added bonus, a desktop drive that supports Thunderbolt 3 might also come with additional DisplayPort and USB connections that allow you to use the drive box as a hub for your keyboard, mouse, monitor, and other peripherals.

You'll really only see the speed benefits of Thunderbolt 3, however, if you have a drive that's SSD-based, or a RAID array. If you'd rather save money than time transferring your data, if you're buying a desktop drive with a single platter-based mechanism inside, or if you have a PC that lacks Thunderbolt 3, you'll want to make sure your drive has a USB connection. Nearly every recent drive we reviewed supports USB, and the same goes for laptops and desktops.

Not all USB ports are created equal, though. The most prevalent is the standard rectangle shape (called Type-A) that's been present on devices for decades. The oval-shaped Type-C connector is quickly gaining traction, though. It's capable of supporting the USB 3.1 standard in addition to Thunderbolt 3, though most Type-C ports include only the former. If you buy a drive with a Type-C cable, make sure it also includes a cable with a rectangular Type-A plug if your PC lacks a Type-C port. Otherwise, you'll need to buy a separate cable or adapter.

Do You Need to Go Rugged?

If you carry your drive around frequently, you'll want to pay attention to how rugged the drive is. Some models include plastic bumpers, and some even meet military standards for shock and dust protection. (Look for support for specifications such as IP67 or IP68.)

And of course, if you're carrying your drive around with you, you want it to look nice. Some, like the Samsung T5, come in multiple colors, while others, like the ADATA SD700, are super-slim and ready to be tossed in a pocket.

Perhaps the only thing you don't need to pay much attention to is the warranty. If your drive breaks because you damaged it, the warranty likely won't cover it. Even if the drive fails because of a manufacturing defect, most warranties simply replace the drive and don't cover the cost of recovery services that attempt to rescue your data from the broken drive.

Let's Look at the Top Models We've Tested...

Also know that you can find external drives that do way more than just store your data. Some include SD card readers to offload footage from a camera or drone in the field, while others have built-in Wi-Fi and can double as an all-in-one home media server. Some of that kind even come with extra-large batteries that can charge your smartphone while you're on the go.

To get you started in the right direction toward the right add-on backup/storage solution, below are 10 of the best drives we've tested of late, at a variety of prices and capacities. Some are SSD-based, while others are platter.