Time Machine Backup drive failure - replacement recommendations

Ideally for backups, HDDs are still the better choice as higher capacity drives are still much cheaper than SSDs. However, HDDs draw more power, so using high capacity drives may overwhelm the available power from the USB/Thunderbolt port on your iMac. This is where an external powered drive enclosure makes more sense.

With that said, I suggest taking a look at the numerous external drive offerings from OWC, would be a great place to start.

FWIW, I have a 2023 Mac mini M2 Pro, and in addition to using a NAS, I have two external drives solutions for things like TM backups. One is an older WD My Book (this particular model is no longer sold by WD;) the other is an OWC miniStack STX.

Yes, I believe we have. Forgive me as I respond to, no less than, 30-40 posts here a day, and my memory isn't as good as it used to be. I do now recall responding to yours earlier now.

Either of those WD external drives should be fine. I have a number of those WD Passport drives and have been using them for years without any issues. The key difference here would be the former link is for an external drive with its own power source. The latter gets its power from the USB port on your Mac. If it were me, and portability is not critical, I would go with the WD Elements one.

I'm happy with the SAMSUNG T7 Portable SSD, 1TB External Solid State Drive that I bought in June of 2022. No need to plug it into a power source (other than my iMac).

There's probably a newer model, now.

martian68 wrote:

What is a good medium for archiving data which you want to be secure in case you need it again, but which only needs to be offline from your computer while being accessible easily? Ideally it would be capacity of a couple of terabytes and I would want to make a couple of copies. The Mac Studio has an SDXC slot, so this would be an option wouldn't it?

I have quite a bit of experience with SD cards, but I primarily have been using them with my Raspberry Pi's. However, you goal for using them, should be a good fit.

Something to keep in mind with all SSD-type drives, is that their memory cells do "wear out" over time, but especially by writing to them often. In your example, this would not be the case as you intend to use them for archives.

Currently, the largest capacity SDXC cards are in the 1 to 1.5TB range. While larger capacities have been announced—such as SanDisk's unveiling of a 4TB microSD card and an 8TB SD card—these products have yet to reach the consumer market.

When considering high-capacity SDXC cards, ensure your device supports the exFAT file system and is compatible with SDXC standards to fully utilize these larger storage options. Your Macs can read & write to exFAT drives.