Posted by Gary Rosenzweig on 4/20/09.
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If you aren’t using Time Machine to back up your Mac, then it is time to start. Here are some options for a Time Machine backup drive.
Video Transcript (Click to Expand)
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today’s episode, let’s find a hard drive to use for Time Machine backups.
So, are you backing up? You really should. Time Machine comes with Leopard, so you’ve already got the software. All you need to do is supply a hard drive to save the backups to, and then you’re protected, either from disaster or from an accidental deletion.
When shopping for a hard drive to use, there are four different types. The first is the standard, normal external hard drive. It comes with a power adapter. You plug it into power, and you plug it into your Mac, either via a USB or Firewire.
Another type is the portable drive. This is basically the same idea, except it’s a smaller drive, similar to the ones used in laptops, so it doesn’t require external power. You just plug it in, usually via a USB, and it gets all the power it needs from USB. So, it’s a little simpler, but they’re a little bit more expensive and they don’t hold as much data.
Now, if you’ve got a Mac Pro, you can actually add more internal hard drives. So, you can add an internal hard drive like this one, and use that for Time Machine backups. Likewise, even if you don’t have a Mac Pro, you can buy a dock like this NextStar dock, and you can plug in an external hard drive here and use a USB to plug it to your Mac.
Now, there’s never been a better time to buy an external drive because they’re really cheap right now. You can get one of those standard external drives with one Terabyte for about $120 and half a TB for about $80. You can also get portable ones, they’re going to be smaller but like a 320 GB one will usually run you about $100. In addition, you can get an internal one for even cheaper, one TB for under $100.
Determining what size you need depends on how you use your Mac. You’ve got to figure out how much stuff is on your Mac’s hard drive. It’s not necessarily important how big the hard drive is, but how much of it you’re using. For instance, I do a lot of video, so I’ve easily got hundreds of gigabytes of stuff on my drive, but someone who just does the occasional photos and has a little music may have only a few GB total on their drive. If you add the system to it, of course, because you want to back everything up, including the library, the fonts, the printer drive, and everything on the Mac so you can completely recreate the hard drive in the case of a crash, then you’re probably looking at 20 GB minimum and a few 100 GB if you’re someone like me using a lot of media.
So, select your hard drive in the Finder and get info on it to find out how much space you’re using. Now this should help you figure out how big of a hard drive you need. Now, if you’re using less than 100 GB, then you probably can just do with a standard drive. It doesn’t really pay to get less than 500 GB nowadays, so I’d go and get one of those external drives, 500 GB, for about $80 and use that. But if you’re using a lot more, if you’re using several hundred GB, you probably want to look at a Terabyte drive.
Your first backup, of course, is going to be a complete backup of everything on your drive. So expect if you have got 100 GB on your drive, for the backup to be 100 GB. But after that, it is going to do it incrementally, so it’s only going to save the files that have changed. This means if you change a lot of big files every day, you’re going to have very large backups. But if you rarely change files, like if your big files are music files and photos and things like that that just stay on the drive and you occasionally add new ones to it, then you’re going to have very small backups every day. So if you have 100 GB in your initial backup, and you’ve got a 500 GB external drive, and you have very small backups, then you’re probably going to be able to save months and months worth of backups on a single drive. Where, if you’re working with video like I am, it’s probably only going to be able to save a few days or weeks worth of backups before it needs to destroy the old ones to save the new ones. Either way, as long as you can get one good backup on a drive, you have a big advantage over not having a backup at all.
Now some neat things about Time Machine backup drives. You can use them for more than one computer. So you set the backup drive to be a Time Machine backup drive by using the Time Machine preferences and saying you want to use that drive. It erases everything on it, and then you start the backup of your computer onto that drive. You can then take that drive, plug it into another computer, say you want to use it, and it won’t erase the drive. Instead, it will store a second folder with all the backups for that computer on it. So, if you have two or three computers in your house, you can use one large drive to back them all up as long as you move them from computer to computer.
Now there’s also a way to backup over your network. So if you have several computers, you can back up to a drive that’s attached to only one of them. I’ll talk about that more in this week’s tip at the site and in the MacMost newsletter.
Now, by default, Time Machine will backup every hour. If that’s a little bit too much for you, you can use a handy program called Time Machine Editor, we’ve recommended it before, to schedule backups or have it backup less frequently than every hour. You can also schedule Time Machine to only backup when the drive is plugged in, so you can have one drive move from computer to computer, you plug it in and within the next few minutes it will start a Time Machine backup.
So, where to buy an external hard drive? Well, there are fewer and fewer computer stores out there, and the Apple Store’s hard drives are nice, but tend to be a little overpriced. So you probably want to buy them online. You can go to Amazon or a store like Newegg. I’ll put some recommendations in the post for this video at MacMost.com of some hard drives that I’ve bought in the past that have worked well for me.
Well, if you’ve been procrastinating buying a hard drive for Time Machine backups, well, the time is now. Whether you’ve got very important work on your Mac or just a few precious photos, you really should have a backup. It’s completely worth it. Until next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today’s episode, let’s find a hard drive to use for Time Machine backups.
So, are you backing up? You really should. Time Machine comes with Leopard, so you’ve already got the software. All you need to do is supply a hard drive to save the backups to, and then you’re protected, either from disaster or from an accidental deletion.
When shopping for a hard drive to use, there are four different types. The first is the standard, normal external hard drive. It comes with a power adapter. You plug it into power, and you plug it into your Mac, either via a USB or Firewire.
Another type is the portable drive. This is basically the same idea, except it’s a smaller drive, similar to the ones used in laptops, so it doesn’t require external power. You just plug it in, usually via a USB, and it gets all the power it needs from USB. So, it’s a little simpler, but they’re a little bit more expensive and they don’t hold as much data.
Now, if you’ve got a Mac Pro, you can actually add more internal hard drives. So, you can add an internal hard drive like this one, and use that for Time Machine backups. Likewise, even if you don’t have a Mac Pro, you can buy a dock like this NextStar dock, and you can plug in an external hard drive here and use a USB to plug it to your Mac.
Now, there’s never been a better time to buy an external drive because they’re really cheap right now. You can get one of those standard external drives with one Terabyte for about $120 and half a TB for about $80. You can also get portable ones, they’re going to be smaller but like a 320 GB one will usually run you about $100. In addition, you can get an internal one for even cheaper, one TB for under $100.
Determining what size you need depends on how you use your Mac. You’ve got to figure out how much stuff is on your Mac’s hard drive. It’s not necessarily important how big the hard drive is, but how much of it you’re using. For instance, I do a lot of video, so I’ve easily got hundreds of gigabytes of stuff on my drive, but someone who just does the occasional photos and has a little music may have only a few GB total on their drive. If you add the system to it, of course, because you want to back everything up, including the library, the fonts, the printer drive, and everything on the Mac so you can completely recreate the hard drive in the case of a crash, then you’re probably looking at 20 GB minimum and a few 100 GB if you’re someone like me using a lot of media.
So, select your hard drive in the Finder and get info on it to find out how much space you’re using. Now this should help you figure out how big of a hard drive you need. Now, if you’re using less than 100 GB, then you probably can just do with a standard drive. It doesn’t really pay to get less than 500 GB nowadays, so I’d go and get one of those external drives, 500 GB, for about $80 and use that. But if you’re using a lot more, if you’re using several hundred GB, you probably want to look at a Terabyte drive.
Your first backup, of course, is going to be a complete backup of everything on your drive. So expect if you have got 100 GB on your drive, for the backup to be 100 GB. But after that, it is going to do it incrementally, so it’s only going to save the files that have changed. This means if you change a lot of big files every day, you’re going to have very large backups. But if you rarely change files, like if your big files are music files and photos and things like that that just stay on the drive and you occasionally add new ones to it, then you’re going to have very small backups every day. So if you have 100 GB in your initial backup, and you’ve got a 500 GB external drive, and you have very small backups, then you’re probably going to be able to save months and months worth of backups on a single drive. Where, if you’re working with video like I am, it’s probably only going to be able to save a few days or weeks worth of backups before it needs to destroy the old ones to save the new ones. Either way, as long as you can get one good backup on a drive, you have a big advantage over not having a backup at all.
Now some neat things about Time Machine backup drives. You can use them for more than one computer. So you set the backup drive to be a Time Machine backup drive by using the Time Machine preferences and saying you want to use that drive. It erases everything on it, and then you start the backup of your computer onto that drive. You can then take that drive, plug it into another computer, say you want to use it, and it won’t erase the drive. Instead, it will store a second folder with all the backups for that computer on it. So, if you have two or three computers in your house, you can use one large drive to back them all up as long as you move them from computer to computer.
Now there’s also a way to backup over your network. So if you have several computers, you can back up to a drive that’s attached to only one of them. I’ll talk about that more in this week’s tip at the site and in the MacMost newsletter.
Now, by default, Time Machine will backup every hour. If that’s a little bit too much for you, you can use a handy program called Time Machine Editor, we’ve recommended it before, to schedule backups or have it backup less frequently than every hour. You can also schedule Time Machine to only backup when the drive is plugged in, so you can have one drive move from computer to computer, you plug it in and within the next few minutes it will start a Time Machine backup.
So, where to buy an external hard drive? Well, there are fewer and fewer computer stores out there, and the Apple Store’s hard drives are nice, but tend to be a little overpriced. So you probably want to buy them online. You can go to Amazon or a store like Newegg. I’ll put some recommendations in the post for this video at MacMost.com of some hard drives that I’ve bought in the past that have worked well for me.
Well, if you’ve been procrastinating buying a hard drive for Time Machine backups, well, the time is now. Whether you’ve got very important work on your Mac or just a few precious photos, you really should have a backup. It’s completely worth it. Until next time, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.
Here are some recommendations of hard drives I have used:
I’ve used many Western Digital MyBooks in the past. Here is the current 1TB hard drive for less than $120.
For internal drives I’ve used several Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB 7200 RPM SATA II Drvies which run under $100.
I’ve also used those internal drives in a Vantec NexStar NST-D100SU 2.5-Inch/3.5-Inch SATA to USB 2.0 and eSATA Hard Drive Dock, which I have connected to my Mac via USB.
Currently I am using a Data Robotics DR04DD10 Drobo 4-Bays USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 Fully Automated SATA Robotic Storage Array for my time machine backups with four of those internal drives. It handles all of my Macs.
Another option is a portable drive. They are smaller and don’t require external power, but are a bit more expensive. I’ve used one similar to this in the past: Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive WDME5000TN
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I would love to see a podcast on how to use Automator.
Hello Dean. What sort of task would you like to see Automator do? It is an interesting tool, but hard to do a tutorial on because it can do such a wide range of things.
I have just purchased a new 15 in. Mac Book Pro.
Watching your Video on backups you said I can use a second internal drive for my time machine;.
Is this correct and if so how do I do this?
You would only be able to do this with a Mac Pro, as it is the only Mac capable of having more than one internal drive.
Hello,
I would like to know what does Time Machine do when the backup drive is not plugged in. Like for instance, if I leave the drive at home, and go to work with my MacBook Pro, how does it do the backup at the end of the day when I come back ?
Will I be able to access hourly backups as if the drive had alwas been plugged in, or will I end up with one backup for the whole day ?
I don’t know if I’m making myself very clear here ^^
Anyway, thanks in advance.
It simply shows a exclamation point in the TM icon in the menu bar, and a message in the menu that it couldn’t connect to the drive. Then it will resume backups when it finds the drive attached at the next scheduled backup time. This is a very normal way to use TM if you have a MacBook.
But does it create the hourly “versions” of my Mac ?
Only for those hours that it can connect with the hard drive.