Best external drive for backup using USB port on TC

My Time Capsule drive is too small and I would like to use a USB hub and plug it into the port on the device. I will have a printer and external drive plugged into the hub, which will be plugged into the Time Capsule.
What type of external drive is best for this, considering it will be on all the time?
Thanks.

FWIW, I have a number of the NewerTech miniStack external hard drive enclosures. You can get these pre-equipped with drives or add your own. They run very cool and quiet and I've not experienced any problems with them and have been operating them 24x7 for quite some time.

Similar Messages

  • Which external drive for backups?

    My brand new 21.5" iMac is on its way here today, and I've been told to buy an external drive for backups. Which I think is a great idea. However, my head's starting to hurt from all the info I'm reading here on the forum about WHICH one, Firewire cables, etc etc. The Rocstor 500GB has been recommended to me personally, but I've read about Lacie and a few other brands. I'm thinking it'd be best to get a 1T size. But WHICH HARD DRIVE SHOULD I GET? I don't wanna spend a lot of bucks!!!
    Plus I have a Firewire cable but how do I know if it's a 2 or a 4? I bought it when I migrated data from my Silver edition iMac to my G4 iMac back in 2004 or 2005.
    Thanks!

    Congratulations Sheryl on the new iMac.
    I recently replaced a G-4 tower with an iMac. The G-4 had a port for Firewire 400. The iMac came equipped with one Firewire 800 port a firewire cable and 4USB ports. I suspect that also applies to your new machine. In order to transfer files from one machine to the other using Firewire 400/800 I had to buy an adapter from the Apple store. Your help menu will explain how to set up the iMac as a target for the transfer.
    As to backup: I use Super Duper and over 8 years had backed up religiously to a Lacie external HD. About the time I needed to use it as a file transfer source to the iMac it quit.
    After much study and considering how Time Machine can eat up space I settled on the external hard drives described below - all were partitioned. The Drobo uses firewire 800 and 4 multiple internal hard drives. It is the place where time machine is backed up. The setup was about $600.
    The two lacie hard drives are USB 2.0 driven.
    I have learned the hard way that it pays to backup the backups.
    If I could only have one external hard drive and with all things considered I would opt for the 1TB Lacie Stark (about $125) that is USB driven.
    Sure hope this helps a bit. To help further we need to know more specifics about your need.
    Mcthomas

  • Time machine has losing contact with my external drive, connected via a USB port.

    Recently my Time Machine program has begun losing contact with my external drive, connected via a USB port. When I attempt to open Time Machine, it indicates there is no external hard drive.  When I click on "setting up time machine" it opens airport utility.   I've tried rebooting, run disk utility repairs for both hard discs, pulled and reconnected the USB cable, even completely shut down the system.    Eventually the two re-establish contact, but I'm not certain what I've done that causes this.  The lost contact appears to happen during the weekends.  The external hard drive is a MJaxtor OneTouch 4. What should I be doing to solve this problem once and for all?

    I use a little app named EasyFind - free at the App Store. It will allow you to search individual volumes or all volumes.
    Download it and see if it will help.
    Clinton

  • How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive.  I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed.  Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.

    How can I force Time Machine to make a complete backup of my Hard Drive.  I just installed a new external drive for Backup since my previous one failed.  Now when I back up, Time Machine only backs up my data folder and the Users folder.
    When I start a backup. Time Machine says "Oldest Backup: None; Latest Backup: None", so it seems like it should do a complete backup, but it only does a partial. 

    Hi I'd like to jump in here. Your app showed me this:
    Time Machine:
              Skip System Files: NO
              Mobile backups: OFF
              Auto backup: YES
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                        Macintosh HD: Disk size: 749.3 GB Disk used: 453.81 GB
              Destinations:
                        Plastic Wrapper [Local] (Last used)
                        Total size: 999.86 GB
                        Total number of backups: 64
                        Oldest backup: 2013-07-24 23:25:11 +0000
                        Last backup: 2013-11-17 01:40:47 +0000
                        Size of backup disk: Too small
                                  Backup size 999.86 GB < (Disk used 453.81 GB X 3)
              Time Machine details may not be accurate.
              All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
              /sbin excluded from backup!
              /usr excluded from backup!
              /System excluded from backup!
              /bin excluded from backup!
              /private excluded from backup!
              /Library excluded from backup!
              /Applications excluded from backup!
    Aside from the size of my backup drive, which I will increase at some point, I'd really like to have time machine backing up all system folders, especially Applications. How to I reset this hidden exclusions?
    Thanks,
    Darcy

  • When I try to drag and drop my photos in iPhoto to an external drive (for backup or to transfer them to my other Mac) only some will transfer.  If I copy

    When I try to drag and drop my photos in iPhoto to an external drive (for backup or to transfer them to my other Mac) only some will transfer.  If I copy and paste, the same thing happens.  The photos are all taken with the same camera, but some will not transfer.  It tells me right away - for example, I'll "grab" 3500 photos to drag and move, and the red ball will tell me it's moving 3256 or something.  If I use the copy function instead - copy 3500 photos, it will show in Finder that I can paste 3256 or whatever. This happens on my iMac as well as my MacBook Pro.  It started recently and I've never had this before.  Any thoughts?  Thank you!

    Are you able to use the File ➙ Export ➙ File Export menu to export  the photos into a folder on the EHD?
    OT

  • Internal versus External drive for Backup/Clone?

    Internal versus External drive for Backup?
    Suggestions/comments as to the pros and cons of each approach.
    Looking at purely doing Clone of main drive.
    As a side thought I am noticing topics on issues with mounting drives. Does having the drive internal make this a non-issue?
    Thx in advance.
    Power MAC G5 Dual 2.0, 30" ACD, RADEON X8000XT card   Mac OS X (10.3.9)   I also have a IMAC G5

    If you use internal and the machine is stolen your backup is lost too.
    If it's for backing up for Business use, your insurers may insist on offsite storage, secure offsite storage that is of a backup or they wouldn't pay up.
    External is often good too because if you ever sent the machine in for repair and the fault(s) were mis-diagnosed and the engineers wiped the HD, they may wipe your backup too.
    That would be very unfortunate. At least with external it could be safe with you. Depending how important your backups are you can also 'Scale' your backup by adding more drives to backup to. So increasin odds of recovery at a later date.
    Mark

  • What's the best Hard Drive for TM? USB or FIrewire?

    What's the best Hard Drive for TM? USB 2.0 or FIrewire 400 or 800?
    Any recommendations would be great. Need about 1TB.

    Michael Conniff wrote:
    The most recent is 1TB, and cost about the same as the previous one which was 500GB. The first d2 was only a little cheaper and was 60GB!
    Same experience here! They keep the price about the same but you get double the storage, so the price of storage has been going down big time! But now I find myself ******* after Drobo Hey, that editor whacked me for "l u s t i n g" that isn't foul language is it?
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    Message was edited by: macjack

  • HT3275 I am using an external drive for backup. I am now getting a message that the drive needs a disk repair, but when I run disk repair it  just seems to freeze.

    I am using an external drive for back up. Yesterday the backup failed and I received a message that the external drive( a passport drive) needed a 'disk repair", when I ran disk repair nothing happened it seemed to freeze. Suggestions? should i simply erase the external drive and start over-my computer is fine.

    Get a different drive for backup.
    In the meantime, once you are backed up some drive safe, then you can attempt to repair the backup drive using the repair the directory link.

  • Cannot unmount External drive for backup....help

    I am trying to use a new My Passport external drive to backup.  I installed the mac os info however it says I must "erase" contents to use.  When I hit erase it says the drive "couldn't unmount".  Also tried to backup to the drive and it said "disk is not in Mac Os Extended (journaled) format.  Any ideas, I am not real familiar with this process.

    Hi KJM4,
    Thanks for using Apple Support Communities. Based on what you stated, it sounds like you need to format the HD. I would recommend that you read this article, it may be able to help the issue.
    Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5, Compressor 4: Format drives as Mac OS Extended - Apple Support
    Formatting a disk using the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format
    Important: If you have any files you want to save, be sure to back them up to another drive before you erase the drive they are on. Reformatting a drive will permanently erase all of the data on it.
    From the Finder, click the Go menu and choose Utilities.
    Open Disk Utility.
    Select the disk or partition and click Erase.
    Choose a format from the Format pop-up menu. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
    Type a name for the disk.
    If you want to prevent the erased files from being recovered, click Security Options, select the option you want, and click OK.
    Click Erase.
    Cheers,
    Mario

  • Time Capsule best to dedicate for backup and usb external for other data or partition TC for dual

    I have lots of video and photo and have 2TB drive on my iMAC and want to use TC for backup. 
    1) Since alot of video and photo, can plug in via ethernet or "cable/usb" vs. wireless to back up my main iMAC?  Otherwise very slow via wireless and perhaps better to get Seagate Go Flex or WD and go Firewire right?
    2) I do need and like to share other data shared vs. just TC to Time Machine Backup, reading this community input, can I confirm that best practice is to let TC have as much dedicated space as possible for Backup and mix partition to do 500GB per say for data on the TC?
    Here's my use case:
    1) Time Machine tied to TC for the 2TB via wired to main machine iMAC - I only have this 1 iMAC.
    2) Like to share data with iPhone and iPAD some pictures, etc...  so do this with USB port and see data on the shared drive via iPhone and iPAD - no need to backup - just viewing - but need wireless - how does iPhone and iPAD detect this device - do I need app or something to view shared drive stuff?
    3) Like to share and light backup for couple PC Win7 laptops just to get files back and forth or share things between family member - nothing intense - but can PC win7 laptops see the shared drive via IP setup or something like that?
    Sorry for multi questions - my first iMAC so still stumbling around to see what works best for me.
    Thanks,
    ///don

    don1217 wrote:
    1) Since alot of video and photo, can plug in via ethernet or "cable/usb" vs. wireless to back up my main iMAC?
    If I understand your question, depending on the signal strength, backing up over Wi-Fi can be rather slow.  An Ethernet connection would be much faster, particularly for the first backup, which will the the largest.  Backing up to a locally-connected disk will be faster still.
    2) I do need and like to share other data shared vs. just TC to Time Machine Backup, reading this community input, can I confirm that best practice is to let TC have as much dedicated space as possible for Backup and mix partition to do 500GB per say for data on the TC?
    I'm not sure what you mean by "mix partition to do 500GB per say for data on the TC".  It's not recommended to share the same volume for Time Machine output and other things.
    need wireless - how does iPhone and iPAD detect this device - do I need app or something to view shared drive stuff?
    If you mean that you need wireless to give an iPhone or iPad access to the Internet, a Time Capsule would do that.  If you want to give those devices access to content on a Time Capsule, that's still an immature technology, although things may improve with iOS 5 or updates beyond that.
    3) Like to share and light backup for couple PC Win7 laptops just to get files back and forth or share things between family member - nothing intense - but can PC win7 laptops see the shared drive via IP setup or something like that?
    A WIn7 computer will be able to see files on the drive(s) of a Time Capsule.  I haven't tried that, but instructions are available.

  • Is it possible to use Boot Camp to partition an external hard drive so there is a OSX partition and a Windows partiton?  I want to use the external drive for backup only, NOT to load Windows and NOT to use as a boot drive.

    I have partitioned the internal hard drive and am running Lion and Win7 Pro on my iMac i5 2.7GHz with 16GB RAM.  Can I use Boot Camp to create a Windows partition on an OSX external hard drive to use for backing up both systems to the same HDD?  I do NOT want to install OSX Lion or Windows 7 Professional on the external drive.  I do NOT want to boot either system from the external drive.  The 3TB external drive is for backup only.

    Use NTFS for Windows and buy Paragon NTFS for OS X
    You can also try Paragon HFS for Windows
    As long as you are using for data and backups, you can leave the drive as GPT too.
    I would recommend strongly to always have a 2nd bootable Mac OS drive, only need 30GB partition. System maintenance. Though LIon Recovery Mode finally makes it less but not totally unneeded.
    And yes you can use Windows to create a partition.
    Boot Camp is too broad. Do you want or mean BC Assistant? not needed but probably possible.
    MBR has trouble with 3TB drives.

  • Have networked external drive for backup. 3 Macs, 1 iMac, 2 MBPros. I'm using Airport Express net'd to Extreme(my router). Ethernet from Express to Seagate Central. Since Maverick Time machine has become unstable, what can I do?

    Have 2 almost new Mac Book Pros & a 27" March '13 iMac. All are 10.9.4. Wireless backup for all had been functioning well until Maverick was installed in all three. Airport Extreme is my router, Express connected to Seagate Central 4TB ext drive wirelessly. Wireless sig levels are maxed out at all 3 systems & Time Machine is now unstable and Apple Care networking tech contact says my config is not supported. Will it be supported if I acquire the new Airport Extreme, replacing the older version? If not, what config will permit 3 systems running TM backups every hour to one backup drive?

    Apple do not support Time Machine to the older Gen1-5 AE with a USB drive.
    I am not even sure if they support Gen6 although they do now say it will work.
    You would be better buying a Time Capsule than another AE.. it is much faster than using USB drives and Apple more likely to help you.. if help is possible on mavericks.
    You will find a cheaper solution is to use Carbon Copy Cloner.. which can continue using your existing setup.. it costs $40 for a license to cover all the computers in your home.

  • What is the best external drive for my MBP using Bootcamp

    Here is what I would like to do.
    I have the latest MBP (5/2008) and I am using bootcamp with vista. I use my mac side and my vista side of the partition equally.
    I am finding it annoying that I am running out of drive space on both side of my computer.
    I am looking for an external drive that I can use with both vista and OS X. Do they exist? I am guessing any drive can be formated to work with one or the other but can any drive work with both at the same time?
    Ideally the drive would be a wifi drive and I can save off all my music and pictures to the external drive and it would be able to stream the music back to my notebook on either side of bootcamp.
    I would also like to plug the drive in and use it as an external drive when editing with final cut.
    I would also like to use the drive wirelessly for backups with OS X time machine.
    Is this asking too much from an external drive?
    What type of drives work well with OS X/ FCP and video storage? Does it have to be firewire or can it be USB2.0?
    Thanks for any help. I am asking because the 1TB apple time capsule is too expensive and will not work with vista.

    Edit Update:
    When I saw wireless-ly all I am really looking for is an drive that can also be used as a networked drive. The drive itself does not need wifi (might be nice) I just want to be able to be able to keep the drive away from my laptop (most of the time) and plug it into my router so it will show up as a networked drive for both all my computers on my home network.
    Thanks for any suggestion
    Healimonster

  • Upgrading my intel iMac to internal SSD and running 1TB external drive from firewire 800 for mass storage while still using a second external drive for backups...my goal-speed with a SSD, to still have 1TB of room for everything i have now..possible?

    I seem to kill HD's every two years...the last two i've installed were WD Caviar Black 1TB 7200rpm 3.5" drives. The speed gains over  stock drives have been remarkable. I don't blame the drives for the failures, my machines are up and running 16 hours a day, every day, year round. They die from 'mileage' so to speak...i assume...there's no viral acvtivity or questionable downloads to gunk things up...just lots of work.
    I have my third new drive ready to install in my intel based iMac...but i've had a thought...I want to install a SSD in my iMac for the speed gain (and recent price drops)...for standard storage i want to use this new WD Caviar Black 1TB in an external drive bay and connect via firewire 800 for storing everything except the OS and my most commonly used software...am i crazy? will the firewire 800 external drive negate the speed gained with an internal SSD??
    I have four iMacs in my office, and one at home. I buy second hand and install new drives and boost memory. I'm going to do this on my 'home' machine...if it works out well i want to upgrade the other three this way...but first i need to know if i'm just dreaming, or will it really make a difference? or even possible??
    Thanks!
    2.66 intell core2duo
    2009 iMac
    8gig ram
    1 gig hd
    OSX ver. 10.8

    The SSD gives great bootup and Application launch speed. I think it also speeds up the video rendering a bit, I do all that on the SSD and then move the finished project to the external drives. As far as the speed for the external drives they are quick enough for viewing video and the file transfer rate is good. I had initially put the SSD into an external cradle (FW800) and the system was faster than on the internal drive. I only got a 1.5GBs SATA drive, perhaps yours could benefit from the 3GBs. I know the 6GBs would be too fast and costs a lot more, even the MacPros need special hookups to make use of the 6GBs.

  • I have v10.8.2 os on my mac. i use an external drive for backup which is on whenever the mac is on. whenever the mac wakes up i get the reminder that the drive was not properly ejected. i did not have this issue with snow leopard?

    since i have upgraded to mountain lion i get a popup whenever my system wakes up telling me that my external drive was not ejected properly. i did not have this issue with snowleopard. i leave my hard drive on and connected for use with time machine.

    Message was edited by: leroydouglas
    better yet, try this solution:
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/12351186#12351186

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