All MMTalker and her husband want are two ready made and speedy and reliable external SSDs that will be used for weekly home backups, sometimes more often. She made no mention whatsoever of an enterprise drive. She asked the list about this because there are so many choices on Amazon, and so many knowledgeable and trustworthy experts here. Neither she or her husband have the experience, knowledge or interest in rolling their own SSDs. We do have Seagate SSDs that are well over 10 years and running out of space.
And she thanks everyone for the excellent advice and suggestions, and sheâs learned a lot in this discussion.
Just another datapoint. We have been using a 1TB and a 2TB Sandisk Extreme SSD for photo storage and editing. No need to copy files back and forth for editing, the disks are so speedy that we simply leave everything on those disks while editing on a 15" MacBook Pro.
For what itâs worth, Iâve had good luck with OWC SSDs installed in a laptop, and with their external drives in general. (https://www.macsales.com) Theyâve been around a long time, and that says something good about the company.
I second the SanDisk Extreme Portables. My 1TB Extreme Portable backs up clones for 2 Macs, and thereâs still enough space for other âarchivedâ stuff plus a TechTool Pro eDrive. Itâs very reasonably priced, and has been reliable and fast enough for my purposes, and can be had up to 4TB. My daughter has one with 2TB, also works fine. The Pro version is faster, but costs more.
Nothing wrong with this, but keep in mind that this means you should make a backup of that SSD to another device, since you donât have a copy of the data anywhere else.
Completely agree. A few years ago I have installed 1TB OWC SSDs in a 2012 mbp and 2013 mini, which extended their useful lives considerably. Both machines are still in use today.
As an aside regarding the speed between Extreme and Extreme Pro V2: I think there is little difference between the two on Macs, reason being the Extreme Pro V2 uses USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (aka SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps) to achieve 20Gbps. Since Macs donât support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 with default hardware, one can only write to the Extreme Pro V2 at up to 10Gbps.
Nonetheless, I still decided to go for the Extreme Pro because of better heat dissipation and more sturdy construction. No regrets so far.
Iâm using 1 TB Samsung SSDâs for time machine and full backups for off site storage. I travel and am occasionally away for lengthy times and the SSDâs take up little space and minuscule weight. Size and weight were important to me.
What he said about the discussion being very useful. Still, my plan would be to call OWC with the problem and be confident I wouldnât spend too much and learn even more from the person there.
I have Samsung T7s for photo backup on travel but they get pretty warm so I would not really want to use them on an always plugged in basis. My iMac boots from an OWC Envoy Pro FX and itâs got sufficient cooling fins on it so that it doesnât get hot whereas the T7s are noticeably hot to the touch although Iâve never aimed my infrared thermometer at them.
An option you might not have considered is a Synology Disk Station (NAS). This will allow all your Macs to backup via Time Machine even if they are connected via WiFi. You no longer need a separate backup drive for each Mac. For longevity, you can backup your Disk Station to a cloud backup provider for perhaps $80 to $150 per year depending on how much data you have. The Disk Station is loaded with features including the ability to stream video directly to your Apple TV or other streaming device.
While a Synology Disk Station will cost more than an external drive enclosure, itâs designed for 24x7 operation and a single large drive will beat several smaller ones. I was reluctant to invest in a NAS at first, but after a year I love it.
I believe it comes down to the amount of data you have and how much storage you expect to consume. Since you mentioned 2TBâs there are far larger HDDâs for far less money. SSDâs are considerably more expensive in larger capacities. SSDâs in RAID can die sooner and the enterprise class SSDs required for longer lifespan are expensive.
One option would be to consider a NAS - Network Array Storage device. Something from Synology would be recommended. Depending on your individual needs, a 2-Bay Synology might be all you need. That would give you two HDD bays and some models offer SSD caching. Each disk is a copy of the other and if one dies the secondary drive will likely survive and allow you to replace the bad drive with a new one of the same capacity. In NAS devices that have more than 2 disks the data is typically split among multiple disks with the ability to handle one or two simultaneous disk failures. Some NAS configuration with many disks would stripe together multiple pairs of mirrored disks. Unless you lost more than 2 pairs at the same time, you could still recover the RAID array without a loss of data most of the time.
You can choose a NAS with more than 2 drives such as 4-8+.
The Synology has an easy to use web interface and it supports emulating an Apple Time Capsule which can backup multiple Macs. You would connect the NAS to your home network and it would act like a file server. You can run some apps on the NAS as well such as a media server like Plex Media Server, etc.
RAID / NAS is not backup. Itâs not bullet proof and you can lose ALL your data. So for backup keep the important data on your Macs and the NAS or consider a second NAS if you have a lot of critical data and you can configure the NAS to sync to the 2nd NAS automatically. Or choose to use some cloud storage or Backblaze cloud backup solutions.
Not to say anything bad about the Synology NAS products, but we have a major article in editing right now about options for replacing the Time Capsule as a network Time Machine backup destination. Iâd recommend holding off on any purchases at least until you can read the article. Should just be a few daysâŚ