- #Best external hard drive for imac time machine how to
- #Best external hard drive for imac time machine portable
- #Best external hard drive for imac time machine pro
- #Best external hard drive for imac time machine password
- #Best external hard drive for imac time machine mac
While offering typical NAS options, it's also a versatile home media hub that's able to stream images and video to computers and mobile devices, as well as Apple TV. Synology has a reputation for producing top quality NAS devices, and the DiskStation DS218play is a great option for amateur photographers. NAS drives are also loaded with a simple computer operating system, allowing you to browse their file contents, view photos and videos, all from a remote location. But unlike a normal external hard drive, a NAS drive adds a network connection, so it can be linked via your internet router to your home network and the web. It allows your entire photo and video collection to be stored in one physical location in your home or studio, just like a conventional external hard drive. However, if you want to use them with Time Machine, they'll need to be reformatted, but it's a simple procedure.Ī NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive is essentially an external hard drive on steroids.
#Best external hard drive for imac time machine pro
It's slower on paper, but will operate at similar speeds to the Extreme Pro when connected to a USB 3.2 port.Īlso bear in mind that both these drives will be pre-formatted to work with both Windows and Mac.
#Best external hard drive for imac time machine portable
If you're using an older Intel-powered Mac, then we'd recommend the cheaper SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2 (non 'Pro') as a portable option. That means this SSD can still unleash its maximum speed potential of up to 2000MB/s, really putting the 'extreme' in Extreme Pro!Ĭapacities range from 500GB to 2TB, which isn't all that much by today's standards, but the payoff is that this is one of the very fastest external hard drives for an M1 Mac.
#Best external hard drive for imac time machine mac
This is linked to your Mac via the short-lived USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connection - the USB generation that directly preceded the current USB 4 standard - but the USB 4 ports on an M1 Mac are backward compatible with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. Although strictly speaking a portable hard drive rather than a device that lives on your desk, there's no reason why it can't be used in place of a bigger external desktop hard drive.Īnd while most external drives use older, slower mechanical hard disk drives to store your data, the Extreme Pro Portable SSD V2 is based around a blazing fast NVMe SSD. Sadly, buying a hard drive that can utilise this tech is currently almost impossible, but this SanDisk drive is the next best thing. On the destination Mac in the Sharing preference pane, select File Sharing and note what it says below File Sharing: On.If you're rocking one of the latest M1 MacBooks or iMacs, you're able to connect a hard drive using the latest Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 interface. If, in step 2, you don’t see the destination Mac as a server, you can also use a more explicit way to access the other Mac. You can select a Finder-mounted networked drive just as easily as a local volume as a Time Machine destination.
#Best external hard drive for imac time machine password
Mount the Time Machine volume in the Finder. Now, set up Time Machine to use this external drive. I wrote a column earlier this year that explains the formatting issues for local and networked volumes. Second, make sure your external volume has been formatted ideally for Time Machine. Wi-Fi will work, but the amount of backup data passing over even the latest, fastest Wi-Fi flavor may bog down other simultaneous network activity.Įven if only your Time Machine destination Mac connects to a base station via ethernet, that still halves the amount of backup data that passes over Wi-Fi-it’s transmitted from a Mac to the base station over Wi-Fi, and then from the base station via ethernet to the destination Mac.
#Best external hard drive for imac time machine how to
Here’s how to do that.įirst, Attach the hard drive to the Mac you want to act as the Time Machine “hub.” This should be a desktop machine and, preferably, one that’s connected via ethernet to your home network. Ed Bernard has all the right pieces, but wasn’t able to find a straightforward explanation for backing up his three Macs to a single external drive that he’s attached to one of them.