external hard drive time machine compatibility

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE COMPATIBILITY MAC OS X
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EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE COMPATIBILITY MAC

As you’ll see, it meets almost none of my preferred technical requirements, but it’s dead easy to set up, and it fulfills its purpose reliably. As a network backup device, it is nearly a direct equivalent to the Time Capsule. To the extent that I conclude anything, it is that when it comes to network backup for the Mac, there are many choices, each with tradeoffs, and you’ll need to decide what makes the most sense for your situation.īut first, one product stands out purely on simplicity-Western Digital’s My Cloud Home. In this article, I will detail my quest to find or build a better Time Capsule and solicit the collective wisdom of the TidBITS community to further that quest. I have set up several NAS devices as Time Capsule replacements for clients, and while they do work, none are perfect, many are too complex or expensive, and some share problems (notably slow performance) with the Time Capsule while introducing a few of their own.

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE COMPATIBILITY MAC

The Time Capsule’s void has been filled by third-party NAS products, though I suspect many Mac users are generally unaware of this category of product. For this reason, I don’t consider synchronizing to be equivalent to backup. Plus, any technology that synchronizes also has the power to delete files from your computer. ICloud Drive’s Desktop & Documents syncing also provides some protection from lost files, but it’s even less comprehensive, omitting, for example, everything else in your Home folder, including your Downloads folder and local cache of mail. Plus, two automated backup systems provide better insurance than one. It is less comprehensive and requires considerably more work to restore from, especially if you need to restore an entire machine.

However, I see cloud backup as a complement to Time Machine, not a replacement for it. Unfortunately, when Apple discontinued its AirPort line of home networking products in 2018, the Time Capsule was one of the casualties.Ī potential alternative is a cloud backup service such as Backblaze, which I frequently recommend, and such a service works even when the laptop is not on your home network. I have seen it fail occasionally, though it saves users’ data much more often than not. As an unusual hybrid, Time Capsule did not earn the confidence of some Mac users as a reliable backup device. The Time Capsule acted as a destination for automatic, hourly Time Machine backups from Mac computers on the same network. In other words, it was a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, though Apple never described it as such.

(If you have to remember to connect a drive for backup, the backup system is no longer fully automatic.)Īpple answered the need for ongoing wireless laptop backups in 2008 with its AirPort Time Capsule, a Wi-Fi router with a hard drive inside. But, speaking from my experience as a consultant, I find that the vast majority of laptop users, myself included, are unlikely to plug in a drive regularly.

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE COMPATIBILITY MAC OS X

Since its introduction in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple’s Time Machine has become one of the Mac’s most essential features, providing transparent, fully automatic, full-machine backup to an external drive, with retention of backup history limited only by the external drive’s capacity.įor desktop Macs, it’s easy to keep an external Time Machine drive permanently connected. Network Time Machine Backups: Moving on from the Time Capsule

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EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE TIME MACHINE COMPATIBILITY PORTABLE

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External hard drive time machine compatibility