Best backup drive for college student

Need recommendation for backup drive for college student using MacBook Pro.

Basic Backup
For some people Time Machine will be more than adequate. Time Machine is part of OS X. There are two components: 1. A Time Machine preferences panel as part of System Preferences; and, 2. A Time Machine application located in the Applications folder. It is used to manage backups and to restore backups. Time Machine requires a backup drive that is at least twice the capacity of the drive being backed up.
Alternatively, get an external drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on backup and restore.  Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Although you can buy a complete external drive system, you can also put one together if you are so inclined.  It's relatively easy and only requires a Phillips head screwdriver (typically.)  You can purchase hard drives separately.  This gives you an opportunity to shop for the best prices on a hard drive of your choice.  Reliable brands include Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Toshiba, and Fujitsu.  You can find reviews and benchmarks on many drives at Storage Review.
Enclosures for FireWire and USB are readily available.  You can find only FireWire enclosures, only USB enclosures, and enclosures that feature multiple ports.  I would stress getting enclosures that use the Oxford chipsets especially for Firewire drives (911, 921, 922, for example.)  You can find enclosures at places such as;
Cool Drives
OWC
WiebeTech
Firewire Direct
California Drives
NewEgg
All you need do is remove a case cover, mount the hard drive in the enclosure and connect the cables, then re-attach the case cover.  Usually the only tool required is a small or medium Phillips screwdriver.

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    Last Modified: September 01, 2011
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    *Be forewarned!*
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    Message was edited by: SPD

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    Michael Conniff wrote:
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  • Can I use TC as a backup drive for a Windows PC

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    Does TC have to be formatted in some special way in order to have the PC write to the drive?
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    Wishing you a Happy New Year - wherever in the world you might be!
    Australia.. !!
    But same back to you.. with knobs on!!

  • Best back up for college lap top

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  • How do I use my backup drive for non-Time Machine stuff?

    I haven't set up Time Machine yet because it wants me to completely format my external hard drive, and it seems to want to use it for TM backups exclusively?
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    Thanks

    DevonC wrote:
    I haven't set up Time Machine yet because it wants me to completely format my external hard drive, and it seems to want to use it for TM backups exclusively?
    However, I would also like to use it to store stuff that I don't want to keep on my computer, eg tons of photos, videos, stuff from my sister's computer, etc.
    Is there a way to do Time Machine but also use the external hard drive for storage? I don't mind temporarily copying the photos etc that are on there to my computer while I format, so that's not the issue. I just don't want my EHD rendered completely useless to everything else.
    Thanks!!!
    There are several ways to do exactly this.
    If you partition the external drive, you can use one partition for TM and the other for anything else.
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    Just remember that whatever you put on the drive takes up room from TM and when the drive gets nearly full, TM will start automatically deleting older files from it's own folder.
    I have my Tiger clone on my external TM drive in a separate partition and everything works fine.

  • Can I use an optical drive as a backup drive for File History?

    I wish to use a DVD drive as a backup...win now calls it file history... drive.  The flash drives and HDs show up an an option but not the external or internal optical drives.  Can they be used?
    This question was solved.
    View Solution.

    Which OS are you referring to?
    An external drive, network or Cloud drive are seen the best options. DVD drives are not seen as viable options. Read this microsoft document about setting up a drive for file history.
    ****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
    2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer

  • Thunderbolt / USB3 questions about external backup drives for my new MacBook Pro

    I have a new MacBook Pro retina 13". It has two USB3 and two Thunderbolt2 ports.
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    Thanks,
    Doug

    Hi Doug,
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    Is it common for drives to have both Thunderbolt and USB2 connections?
    Drives sold as Thunderbolt often (not always) have USB as well, drives sold as USB never (in my experience) have Thunderbolt connections.
    Are there "hubs" for Thunderbolt like there are for USB? Considering the limited number of ports, I'm wondering the best way to connect 2 external drives. My iMac has 4 USB2 ports on the back, and I connect one drive separate to each of those ports, rather than going through a hub.
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    Is Thunderbolt just an Apple thing? Or is it a new standard widely used by peripherals now? I just never heard of it before. Is it faster than USB3?
    I'ts an Apple technology (like firewire) and is far from widely used on peripherals.  There ARE Thunderbolt drives etc by companies such as LaCie, WD etc but they are still very expensive (3 or 4x the price of an equivalent sized USB drive).  For some this was a worthwhile expense since Thunderbolt is many times faster than USB2.  But the arrival of USB3 has, in my opinion, changed the landscape.  Yes, Thunderbolt is theoretically faster than USB3 (up to twice as fast) but benchmark tests have shown that in real world situations, the speed difference varies from no difference to Thunderbolt being 25 or 30% faster.  When you take into account that USB3 drives are more common than Thunderbolt and are only a little more expensive than USB2 drives at present, then it's a "no brainer" as far as I am concerned.
    Hope this helps.
    Jon

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