A reliable External Hard Drive solution was brought up in the Dish Forum by Luddite by Choice where they mentioned having issues with USB devices on their Mac using Time Machine. In the interest of sharing what's worked for me in the past, I wanted to start a thread here in the Computers and Gadgets sub-forum to discuss those solutions.
My first Mac was a refurbished 2006 Mac Pro (the first with the dual Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz CPUs) and I used Apple's Time Capsule for Time Machine backups. The Time Capsule (I still have it and it's still working) had the 3 TB internal drive which could be configured as a single Time Machine device for multiple Macs or as a shared LAN storage device with additional partition for Time Machine, which is what I did. The Time Capsule was also an Apple AirPort, their Wi-Fi router solution which was pretty great in its time. The Time Capsule sits in the basement by the network hub where our ADSL comes in and a gigabit switch sends CAT 5e to various rooms through a patch panel. The Time Capsule plugs directly into the switch, as did the Mac Pro. Throughput was a maximum 1,000 Mbps compared to USB 2.0 limit of 480 Mbps.
Over the years, I added a Mac Mini to replace a Dell PC that Foxbat, Jr. used for class work (Microsoft Office applications used by our school system made that easy) and added it the the Time Capsule for Time Machine backups. I eventually got a MacBook Air and used Wi-Fi to make the Time Machine backups.
The Time Capsule eventually became an orphan as Apple got out of the Networking business and I started investigating different technologies for Time Machine backups. I switched to Thunderbolt as I picked up a LaCie external enclosure with Thunderbolt 2 connections. In 2014 I upgraded to a 5K Retina iMac and kept the LaCie enclosure and backups from my Mac Pro. Eventually that hard drive started to have errors, and I got a 4 TB SATA III Western Digital "Green" Drive that was supposedly more energy efficient and ran cooler. I was able to use the Disk Utility to make an Image of my Time Machine drive, take the LaCie enclosure apart, replace the 2 TB bad drive with the new 4 TB drive, button it up, and restore the Image backup. So I then used the extra 2 TB as extra storage on my iMac, so not the best practice to store data on the same physical disk as the backups.
Fast forward to today, the iMac got replaced last fall with a Mac Mini with M4 Pro chip and available Thunderbolt 5 connectivity. I have two external SSDs for supplemental storage through an OWC Thunderbolt 4 Hub (I wanted a free Thunderbolt 5 port on the back of the Mac Mini). The one SSD is a Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 Rocket 4 TB drive and the other is a Sabrent Dual Enclosure Thunderbolt 3 with two 4 TB Samsung 990 EVO SSDs installed in a macOS RAID 1 mirror.
Time Machine is configured to use the Mirrored 4 TB enclosure and backups run In hardly any time at all. I used the BlackMagic disk test tool to show read/write speeds of around 2.5 GB/sec.
For the other Mac (I retired and chose the iPad for computing on the road instead of the MacBook Pro I had been using when working Remote) it's using the LaCie external drive connected via Thunderbolt. So, no Wi-Fi Time Machine backups, everything is Thunderbolt direct connect.
I replaced the Time Capsule Wi-Fi duties with a Synology RT2600ac. It updated all the Wi-Fi flavors to increase link security and added a bunch of features if needed. It also has a 4 TB USB 3.0 Sabrent External Hard Drive enclosure configured as a second Time Machine backup destination. When I still had the MacBook Pro, that's where its Time Machine backups went.
My first Mac was a refurbished 2006 Mac Pro (the first with the dual Intel Xeon 2.66 GHz CPUs) and I used Apple's Time Capsule for Time Machine backups. The Time Capsule (I still have it and it's still working) had the 3 TB internal drive which could be configured as a single Time Machine device for multiple Macs or as a shared LAN storage device with additional partition for Time Machine, which is what I did. The Time Capsule was also an Apple AirPort, their Wi-Fi router solution which was pretty great in its time. The Time Capsule sits in the basement by the network hub where our ADSL comes in and a gigabit switch sends CAT 5e to various rooms through a patch panel. The Time Capsule plugs directly into the switch, as did the Mac Pro. Throughput was a maximum 1,000 Mbps compared to USB 2.0 limit of 480 Mbps.
Over the years, I added a Mac Mini to replace a Dell PC that Foxbat, Jr. used for class work (Microsoft Office applications used by our school system made that easy) and added it the the Time Capsule for Time Machine backups. I eventually got a MacBook Air and used Wi-Fi to make the Time Machine backups.
The Time Capsule eventually became an orphan as Apple got out of the Networking business and I started investigating different technologies for Time Machine backups. I switched to Thunderbolt as I picked up a LaCie external enclosure with Thunderbolt 2 connections. In 2014 I upgraded to a 5K Retina iMac and kept the LaCie enclosure and backups from my Mac Pro. Eventually that hard drive started to have errors, and I got a 4 TB SATA III Western Digital "Green" Drive that was supposedly more energy efficient and ran cooler. I was able to use the Disk Utility to make an Image of my Time Machine drive, take the LaCie enclosure apart, replace the 2 TB bad drive with the new 4 TB drive, button it up, and restore the Image backup. So I then used the extra 2 TB as extra storage on my iMac, so not the best practice to store data on the same physical disk as the backups.
Fast forward to today, the iMac got replaced last fall with a Mac Mini with M4 Pro chip and available Thunderbolt 5 connectivity. I have two external SSDs for supplemental storage through an OWC Thunderbolt 4 Hub (I wanted a free Thunderbolt 5 port on the back of the Mac Mini). The one SSD is a Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 Rocket 4 TB drive and the other is a Sabrent Dual Enclosure Thunderbolt 3 with two 4 TB Samsung 990 EVO SSDs installed in a macOS RAID 1 mirror.
Time Machine is configured to use the Mirrored 4 TB enclosure and backups run In hardly any time at all. I used the BlackMagic disk test tool to show read/write speeds of around 2.5 GB/sec.
For the other Mac (I retired and chose the iPad for computing on the road instead of the MacBook Pro I had been using when working Remote) it's using the LaCie external drive connected via Thunderbolt. So, no Wi-Fi Time Machine backups, everything is Thunderbolt direct connect.
I replaced the Time Capsule Wi-Fi duties with a Synology RT2600ac. It updated all the Wi-Fi flavors to increase link security and added a bunch of features if needed. It also has a 4 TB USB 3.0 Sabrent External Hard Drive enclosure configured as a second Time Machine backup destination. When I still had the MacBook Pro, that's where its Time Machine backups went.
