Group test
Reviewed by IAN OSBORNE
ON TEST…
> LaCie Rugged Mini SSD 2TB > Lexar Armor Portable SSD 1TB > SanDisk Desk Drive 8TB > SanDisk G-Drive Professional 12TB > Verbatim Store ’n’ Go
Mini Diamond 1TB >WD My Book Desktop HDD 22TB
Group test
Reviewed by IAN OSBORNE
ON TEST…
> LaCie Rugged Mini SSD 2TB > Lexar Armor Portable SSD 1TB > SanDisk Desk Drive 8TB > SanDisk G-Drive Professional 12TB > Verbatim Store ’n’ Go
Mini Diamond 1TB >WD My Book Desktop HDD 22TB
Everyone knows how important it is to make regular backups E of your Mac’s internal – and possibly external – drives, so if you’re not doing them already, start today! Macs have a bundled backup system called Time Machine. This has been a part of OS X/macOS since 2007’s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. It’s easy to set up, and it makes and keeps hourly backups for the last 24 hours, dally backups for a month and then weekly backups for anything older than a month. It keeps doing this until it runs out of space, and then it deletes the oldest weekly backup to make room for new backups. Time Machine backs up incrementally, that is, after the first time, it only backs up files that have changed or are new. Expect your first Time Machine backup to take quite a while, even as long as overnight, but after that, it’s pretty quick, depending on how fast your backup drive is.
But where do you back up to? We strongly suggest you buy an external drive, and only use it for Time Machine. It’s entirely possible to partition a drive and keep data on one partition and Time Machine on another, but if your drive fails you then lose both your data and your backups. Also, it’s a good idea to buy as large a drive as you can afford. The bigger it is, the further back your backups will go.
If you have a desktop Mac or a notebook Mac that you don’t take out of the house for long periods of time, we recommend a desktop hard drive – that is, one you have to plug into the mains as well as your Mac. These give the most capacity for your money. If you need to make backups while on the move, a portable drive is preferable.
How we tested
We selected these drives for their build quality and connectivity. Capacity is obviously important for backup drives, so we’ve referenced the other capacities available for each model in the table on p83. We took read and write speeds using the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, though as the drives are for backing up and not working from, speed is not of primary importance here.
Things to consider…
1 Desktop or portable?
Desktop drives need a mains power supply, while portable drives are powered by the data bus. Portable drives are also smaller, and therefore more convenient, but desktop drives give a greater capacity for your money.