By George Kopp
Q: With all the choices, which Hard Drive do I choose for backing up my Macintosh with Time Machine?
A: I wish there was a simple answer, but unfortunately there isn’t one. Choosing a backup drive involves a number of factors that need to be take into account. Many of these factors depend on the type of machine you have and the size of your original harddisk. In this article, I am going to look at a number of decision points and attempt to provide some assistance in making that selection.
Internal vs External
Raw drives are drive mechanisms that are sold without a case, These drives are intended to be installed inside the computer box. For Mac users, this decision point is simple. Unless you own a MacPro, there is no room inside any Mac case for an additional internal drive. External is tha answer.
If you own a Mac Pro, internal drives make good sense. Internal drives are slightly cheaper and will backup faster since they connect directly to the machine bus. These drives need to be SATA drives (also called Serial ATA). They attach to preinstalled sleds in the MacPro very easily. The only reason for an external drive on a MacPro is to allow for off site storage (ie… take the external drive to another location) or if you have filled all 4 available drive bays inside the MacPro.
Brand
These day, there are many brands of drive available at your local Staples or Best Buy. The brand of the drive actually has little to do with the quality of the unit. The actual harddisk mechanism inside the box is likely made by 1 of 3 manufacturers and telling the difference between them is not really important. It really all boils down to case design, interfaces and price.
Don’t be fooled by vendors that want you to spend more money for either a “Mac” version of a drive or for a “premium” model. The drive mechanism is likely the same part. Mac formatted drives are just that, pre formatted for a mac. That is no big deal because you can easily reformat a PC formatted drive on the Mac. In fact, thime machine recognizes a new drive plugged in and asks to reformat it if it is a PC model. Don’t pay extra for this formatting alone.
Also don’t pay extra for backup software. Time Machine, which is a builtin feature of MacOS 10.5 Leopard is better than any of these backup solutions that ship with new drives. Only consider backup software if you are using 10.4 or older and in my opininon, your money is better spent upgrading to Leopard to do your backups if your machine will handle it.
All that said, I do have a favorite brand. Western Digital makes fair priced external drives that work very well. There are a number of models available and best of all, you can get them locally at the Best Buy of Staples store. When I recommend a drive, I choose a Western Digital.
Desktop vs Portable drive
Either a desktop or portable drive will work fine. Portable drives are usually smaller, have less capacity, and cost more. If you are using a desktop Mac, purchase a desktop drive. There is little reason to spend the extra for the portable one. If however you are using a laptop, you may want to still purchase a desktop drive.
Desktop drives are usually made from a more available, more reliable and larger mechanism. These drives usually use a 3 ½” drive mechanism. These drives are available in larger sizes and at less cost. Portable drives use a 2 ½” mechanism just like those used in laptops. These are smaller, have less capacity, use less power, but cost more.
One important consideration is that a Desktop drive will need to be plugged into electricity while a portable drive usually is self powered from the USB or the Firewire bus. This is nice for travel since you don’t have to plug it in to power, just the computer.
If you own a laptop, but use it quite a bit in one place, a desktop drive is likely a better solution. If you want a backup drive that can travel with you, choose a portable drive for that application.
Size
My recommendation is to think of the future and purchase a drive as large as you can afford. You will be amazed at how data accumulates and how fast you fill the drive you have. Raw drive mechanisms are available as large as 2Tb today. External desktop drives are available that large also but the real sweet spot here today is the 1Tb drive. Portable drives are available as large as 500Gb with their sweet spot being at the 300Gb level.
Time machine is very smart. It will use all the space you give it and continue to keep copies of data from the past. The general thing to remember is always select a drive twice the size of the internal drive you want to backup if you can. This way you have plenty of space for multiple backups in time machine. This gives you the most flexibility.
Interface (ports)
Drive makers, including Western Digital make many models. One of the many considerations for drive pricing is the type of interface ports the drive has. Some of the common interfaces you’ll see are:
USB – all drives these days include USB 2.0. For many of the lower price drives, that may be the only interface they include.
Firewire – In past years, I would have always recommended that you use Firewire. There are many technical reasons for this but in general Firewire is always faster to backup than USB. Firewire has two variants, 400 and 800. Firewire 400 ports add a slight cost the drives. Most drives with Firewire 800 ports are considered premium. Theoretically, firewire 800 is twice as fast as Firewire 400 but practically, the difference is less than 20%. Firewire 800 ports work as Firewire 400 ports also, you just need a 800 to 400 cable.
These days, Apple seems a little unsure of Firewires future. New hardware has gone to Firewire 800 over 400, reduced the number of ports to a single port, and deemphasized it’s use. Some Macs like the new Macbooks and Macbook Air do not have Firewire at all.
eSATA – External SATA. SATA is the native interface od all of todays drives. The External version of this is called eSATA. This port is expected to be used in future Macs but no Mac today can use it.
Ethernet – This port allows a drive to work connected directly to an Ethernet network. It is technically called Network Accessible Storage or NAS. This is what apple does in the time capsule (a great but more expensive backup unit). Having this port allows a drive to hang on a network rather than be connected to a machine. But, it is important to note, these drives are not compatible with Time Machine unless you use the Apple Time Capsule. If you need some extra traditional storage that you may want to share, this is a good option but for Time Machine, it is not a consideration.
So what do you get? My recommendation here is to get a drive that has Firewire 400 and USB. If cost is a major issue, USB only drives are fine but if you have a Firewire port on your computer, backups are faster with Firewire.
Price
Drive prices have dropped a lot lately. Price should be one of the last things to think about. My recommendation is to purchase drives near the sweet pricing spots I described above. These are the ones in the Sunday circulars. Again, I recommend you purchase a drive as large as you can afford. Up to the sweet spot. Larger drives above the sweet spot size will cost a lot more and are usually not a good choice unless you have a great deal to backup. These larger drives will become tomorrow’s sweet spot but if you need a drive today, don’t spend the extra money.
What will it cost? Today, in February 2009, an 1 Tb USB external drive costs between $109 and $199 depending on features and sales.
Conclusions
All this is probably much more than you want to know about backup drives. These conclusions will be my opinions of what you should get in a nutshell:
• Consider as a first choice a Western Digital drive
• Get a desktop Model unless you need to backup your laptop on the road
• Size the drive a twice the size of your internal drive minimum
• Get a drive with a Firewire Port if the cost is not too much more and your Mac supports it
• Watch the weekly circulars. Drives are always on sale.
