Recommendation for external drive for time machine

Question

I just got my new iMac today, and it has a 1 TB hard drive. I've read that I need at least 1.5 TB to run Time Machine. Since the largest drive I own in 1 TB, it's time to upgrade. Suggestions for a good, stable drive that plays well with Time Machine?

Answer 1

luba petrusha wrote:
Pondini,
Thanks. I use my computer for, among other things, photography, and tend to fill the drive. I had to move my music files to an external drive to free up space. My current computer (the one that's being replaced) has a 500 GB hard drive and almost that much data. So I'm looking for a drive that will last me as long as the computer does.
You're going to have a choice, then, whether to get a relatively-inexpensive external, that probably won't last that long, or a relatively-expensive one that will. All hard drives fail, of course, sooner or later, and since most of us buy largely on price, the low-end externals aren't exactly bullet-proof.
My other drives (LaCie 250 GB, used only for iTunes, and OWC 500 GB, used for back-up with SuperDuper) are Firewire, and work well.
Is there an advantage to Time Capsule? I am still using an old Airport Extreme given to me by a friend years ago. Does it warrant replacing, or is Time Capsule an unnecessary expenditure?
Wireless is fairly slow, but TM can back-up without having a drive physically attached, so it's a bit of a trade-off.
A Time Capsule, of course, is a combination wireless router and disk drive. So if you already have a reliable router, it may not make sense to get another one. I've never had a TC, but prefer a separate Airport Extreme and external disk drive for it; when the drive fails, I can just get a new one.
Depending on which Mac(s) you're talking about, there may be another solution as well. If you're going to have both an iMac and a laptop, you can share a drive on the iMac with the laptop. Thus the iMac can back-up directly, and the laptop wirelessly (both have to be running Leopard or Snow, of course, and be on the same local network).
Just for comparison, doing a small (about 30 gb) full backup, I get about 40 gb/hr via F/W 400 or USB; about 21 gb/hr to a USB disk on my AEBS via Ethernet; about 13 gb/hr wirelessly. That all varies greatly, of course, depending on load, contention, interference, etc.
And you can do the large initial backup via Ethernet, then shift to wireless. There's also a fairly involved procedure where you can do the first directly-attached, then change, but it's a bit tricky and involves a lot of back and forth.