Recommendations for External Hard Drive

Miscellaneous
41

OK so if it is local, that might not be possible with my current laptop (MacBook Pro 2015). Not only is my laptop old but I also have a lot of old “junk”(?) files from years and years of transferring data from an old to a new laptop. Next time I buy a new one, I won’t transfer the data. I will move things one by one based on what I use. I am daunted by this task but it has to be done. At that point, I might be able to do local CCC backups.

How much space does the CCC backup take on your local hard drive and how large are the databases you work with?

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A backup to the drive you are backing up is not in and of itself useless, but its use is noticeably limited. I would strongly recommend you make backups to a secondary device (e.g. an external hard drive). I’m not sure it is possible to answer your question regarding the amount of space used on the local drive to prepare a backup - I suspect you are not using a modern file system which fully leverages snapshots.

Disk Utility will list your internal drive and its partitions; if you select the first container/volume/partition the file system used will be shown underneath the name of the item in the main section of the window.

43

All the 2015 MacBooks offer USB 3 with up to 5 Gbps - any 1 TB drive attached that way should offer comfortable speed. Assuming the drive is connected via USB, are you using a USB 3-cable (or a USB 2-cable)? (I’m assuming here that any 1 TB drives on the market offer a USB 3-interface.)

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I am attaching a screenshot of what I found in Disk Utility. I do not know what that picture means. I see a Macintosh HD snapshot, but I have no idea what it is. All volumes/ partitions are APFS.

Yes, I make my backups on an external hard drive, and then I move the zip file of the backed up database to Dropbox. This way I have it at least in two places.

I was asking about the space that local files make because the explanation that I received from Arq was that even though it is a cloud service, it needs to leave files on the hard drive. Would not Disk Inventory X show you how much space the CCC backups are taking on your computer?

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Slow in what way?

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Anna, I am not sure I understand why it is not possible to do a local backup with a MacBook Pro 2015, even full of junk. I have several Macs, some are form the early 2000s, and I can do a local backup via CCC (or other apps) in any of them. I think you might be misunderstanding what the local backup is.

Local backup means (usually) connecting an external drive to your Mac, which I suppose has USB-3 and Thunderbolt-2 ports (and BTW this is not at all a bad or slow machine).

Then using CCC to create a clone of whatever you want to backup. Can be your “Documents” folder, for example, if that’s where you store most everything.

The clone occupies pretty much the same amount of space as the original (minor differences if disk drives, the internal Mac one and the external are very different capacities)

If you are getting challenged by this and has lots of things, then the more IMPORTANT it is for you to backup up what you have right away.

As Blanc says, don’t back up to the same drive, it’s slow(er) and quite useless, because if that drive fails, you loose everything.

If you get CCC, I can help walk you through the process (with the usual caveat that I am not seeing your desktop, so it’s basically advice through here)

Just for Devonthink, I have about 240 GB of databases, the largest being around 80 gigabytes. Because I do store MAN Y images and pdf. But it has worked perfectly for me the last 17 years or so.

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47

Yep, that’s what I asked too. A MBP 2015 is definitely NOT slow. Unless you’ve loaded it with so much stuff, has so much legacy apps crud, keep 100 tabs open in Chrome…

48

Anna, how are you getting a zip file from the database?

Arq IS right, there are files left in the computer so that it can sync to the cloud, same will happen with Backblaze. But you should not be touching these at all!!!

A local backup to an external drive, you don’t even need CCC - you can just connect the external and drag your databases to the new drive, period. CCC is great because it AUTOMATES it.

And you would not be zipping anything. It is COMPLETELY separated from whatever Arq, backblaze, Time Machine would be doing.

BY THE WAY Anna, I think I might know a potential reason your computer is slow. Your Macontosh HD - which contains your system and applications, is 250GB. This IS a small drive. If you filled this drive almost to capacity with other stuff, such as your data files, then it WILL BE VERY SLOW - I am not shouting here, just emphasizing. Boot drives (the main one in a computer) DO NOT LIKE to be filled too much, usually it would require at least 20% free. Why? because the system uses free space all the tie to move things around. When the disk starts getting too full, it needs to do a very long and complicated dance to do what it needs to do. Freeing up space makes it suddenly feel like you just bought it! (if you don’t have other reasons for sluggishness).

So, if it were me, this is what i would do: get TWO new drives, not one. Get some Samsung or SanDisk SSD, cheap, say 2TB each. Plug one permanently to your Mac, use it for all your data, that is, videos, Devonthink databases. Every now and then, plug in the other new drive, and copy using the Finder from yur data disk to this, call it “Backup”. If you want to automate it, and also use Time Machine, etc, that is, going a bit higher-level, than you could use something like a NAS, or OWC Thunderbay with 2 or more drives, etc. But don’t worry about these, I could help you later with them.

49

Also the first backup, whether Time Machine or CCC, will take quite some time. It’s doing a full backup. The subsequent backups are generally incremental backups. A periodic full backup is usually desirable to add a to your backup strategy as well, often a weekly one.

50

My pure CCC (or previously Time Machine) backup disks have APFS format to take advantage of snapshots. My “carry on” disk has exFat format as I’m a Windows-macOS guy and that is the most reliable format that works in both systems.

Notes related to speed on disks.

  1. APFS fragments disks like hell. If the disk is SSD there is no issue because time to access any cell is the same or almost the same (what slows a SSD disk is not being TRIMmed), but mechanical ones work slower and slower across time.
  2. You can have a Thunderbolt 1000 tera-giga-gugol speed bus but connected to a 5200 RPM mechanical disk (like most 3.5" portable disks are), you will have the mechanical disk speed, that is, well, slow. If you add AFPS format, then it can become dramatically slow.

(And there is a comic lesson here: fragmentation has been a serious problem in all disk formats, including NTFS, HFS, FATxx, etc… However, across time all implementations solved the issue and latest macOS/Windows/Linux do not fragment (or fragment but in a way that does not affect performance) “classic” disks and formats. Now with APFS we have started over with fragmentation :rofl: :rofl: )

5 Likes
51

Forgot to say I have a second backup strategy, in this case Online: I have a Synology DS1019+ 5-bay disks. All my stuff is duplicated there, some automatically (like DT sync store), others manually using FreeFileSync to sync my carry-on disk, Dropbox files and DT databases, all of that manually sync every 15 days or so.

Parts of that Synology are uploaded via iDrive (10 TB account) twice a week. Others are uploaded to my extra OneDrive not-used Office accounts. Most of my NAS files are in different clouds.

And now enter my photos: I use iCloud Photos but as it has lost some across time, I have OneDrive set to upload iPhone photos into my main OneDrive account, plus those photos in my Samsung S22Ultra as well. And, this is the trick, those photos are downloaded into my NAS via Synology CloudSync, but in this case, instead of putting NAS content into cloud, put cloud content into my NAS.

A complex but successful configuration as all is in my own devices, plus my NAS plus at least one cloud.

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52

I do not know if the cables are USB 3 or USB 2.

The WD external drive arrived with a cable and an adapter (attachment?) which enables me to plug it into my computer. The picture (not mine) shows the cable.

The slowness was manifested in a couple of ways. When I opened Finder, clicked on the external drive, I could see all my databases and the size in the appropriate column. For two of the databases, which happen to be the largest (30+ GB each), the size did not appear immediately which was odd. It would appear in may be 10 mins or so, may be not at all. For the largest and most frequently used database, the size was also listed as 0, which was bizarre because I could open it and see all files. Opening the database was also not as quick as the Samsung external drive.

In any case, I deleted everything from that external drive in an attempt to move back all databases and if the problem is remedied.

So I am hoping that the drive won’t slow me down. The Samsung 500 GB has been working great but I need to switch to a larger one.

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I just replied to Blanc and am pasting my answer here too:

The slowness was manifested in a couple of ways. When I opened Finder, clicked on the external drive, I could see all my databases and the size in the appropriate column. For two of the databases, which happen to be the largest (30+ GB each), the size did not appear immediately which was odd. It would appear in may be 10 mins or so, may be not at all. For the largest and most frequently used database, the size was also listed as 0, which was bizarre because I could open it and see all files. Opening the database was also not as quick as the Samsung external drive.

54

So you’re referring to a drive separate from your external backup drive?

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Thank you so much for all of these suggestions. I was wracking my brain last night how to handle all of these external drives. I currently have 5 of varying sizes and for varying purposes. If you could suggest how to back up my data, I would really appreciate it. Ideally what I would like is:

  • a permanently connected external drive (2TB is a great idea).
  • Then, drive#2 (2TB is also a great idea, but I currently have 1TB drives) to copy all databases and video files into it about once per week. I really like this idea of copying the databases to another drive.
  • Drive #2 will need to be used as a place to store .zip files of the databases which I will then move to Dropbox.
  • Drive #3 and #4 for daily or every other day TimeMachine backups. My understanding is that it is better not to partition external drives for a combination of TimeMachine and backup files. This is what I was told when I was speaking with Apple customer service. Hence, the two extra drives. Two because one can give up.

My goal is to have multiple backups saved in various places one of which I definitely want to be a cloud version in case something happens to the drives.

If you have other suggestions, please let me know. You mention NAS, OWC Thunderbay. I do not know what that means.

As for my hard drive. I spend yesterday and today trying to clean it up. I deleted 70GB worth of files (40GB from an Arq back up… long story) and 30 GB from the Parallel app (I needed it to run a Windows application). My computer reported that I have freed a lot of space, as it should, and then it started reporting that only 17GB (even less) are free. At this point, I have no idea what else I can do. There are no document files on the computer (MS Word or pdf). I have several Scrivener projects, but they are less than 1GB. Only the necessary apps (Microsoft Word, Scrivener, DT3) are on my computer. My hope is that the computer needs time to delete all these files and that tomorrow it will be all good.

56

I was referring to one specific external hard drive, of the 5 external hard drives I have at the moment. I was referring to the newly purchased WD 1TB drive to which I wanted to transfer all databases. This is the drive that was acting slow.

The Samsung 500GB where I currently have all DT3 databases is fast, and I have no problems.

57

How does one do a full backup rather than an incremental backup? Great idea!

58

Anna, I think your strategy is getting there.

Ultimately, what you can do depends very much on how much you can/want to spend.
You could spend more money, and get faster Thunderbolt external drives. Or stick with USB drives and spend less. It will be slower, but by no means slow, and from what I see, if you are basically storing stuff, it’s more than enough.

At any rate, I think your path to a successful backup strategy HAS to go through buying CCC or something similar.

I would do this, it means buying

(A) one small portable 2TB drive, I would get a Thunderbolt Samsung or SanDisk
(B) one USB hub with 2x 2TB drives in it, like this one: OWC 4.0TB Mercury Elite Pro Dual RAID Storage... at MacSales.com
(C one 2TB USB external drive, will be cheap

Let’s talk about (A) - this would be for your daily use. 2TB. Samsung or SanDisk are great (I have both, in many versions). Being portable, in case you ever need, you just put it in your pocket and go. Get a Thunderbolt (any Thunderbolt version is fine, yours is version 2) - much faster than USB.

Now (B). A USB hub, the OWC one is perfect, will come with 2x 2TB disks (you could swap the drives in the future if you get a newer Mac with a larger internal drive).

Disk 1 of this hub (call it B1) would be used for making daily backups of your drive (A), manually or using CCC (preferred)
Disk 2 (B2) would be used for Time Machine backups of your 250GB Mac internal drive

Now to drive (C - this can be very cheap, you can buy a USB 4TB Hard drive cheaply. You would create 2 partitions in this drive, one partition 1TB, the other 3TB.

This drive will NOT be connected all the time to your computer, you would plug it in say, once a week.

The 1TB partition you would for CLONING, using CCC, your internal 250TB Mac drive.
The 3TB partition, you can use for making an extra copy of your data files.

59

Anna, what is your Mac telling you now about your drive, how much is occupied?

Some other items:

NAS: if you are fairly brave, you can set up a NAS. What is it? An external drive connected to your wifi network. That’s it. I use and love Synology. I backup my DevonThink databases to it, and use it to synchronyze them to DevonThink To Go in my iPhone and iPad. I also backup my wife’s Surface computer. Do you need it right now? maybe not.

Slowness: even in my faster 2019 Macbook Pro, very often the file and folder sizes DO NOT get displayed. It’s always been like that. Because the system is doing an extraordinary amount of computing. I don’t remember if M1 Macs are better at this.

Full vs. Incremental: Using CCC or some similar app of course, you can’t do it manually. Incremental means as Jim mentioned (I think) just looking at what was changed and updating. A Full backup means erasing the previous one, and running the backup app again. If you do it, don’t do it without having an EXTRA copy of your backup somewhere :slight_smile:

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60

M1 is as slow as Intel ones when calculating the size of the bundles.

But my message is to comment that there is a strategy commonly used for full backups. I’m not sure if CCC supports this, but Time Machine doesn’t. You do a full backup. Next time you do a new full backup and after done, delete old full. This way you always have one full backup to avoid the unlike situation (remember Murphy laws) that if you delete the previous full backup before finishing the new one, and then your mac crashes, you are without any backup.

(There are a lot more backup strategies: incremental, differential, differential with one full, … depending on what kind of data and how that data is changed in order to minimize the risk of data loss and make backups faster and using less disk space. Never heard of them in Apple ecosystem, but they are quite common in servers and Windows environment).