There are so many smart technical people on this Forum so I thought I'd ask for your advice.
I have a MacBook Pro with a G-Drive as the external hard drive for Time Machine (backups). The G-Drive seems to have gone bad so I need a new one.
What external drive would you recommend?
Thanks.
I very much like western digital "elements" and "passport". I use windows, so don't know if wd likes apple. I've got several, going back years, ranging from 500g to 2T. I buy refurbished on ebay from WD as the seller, usually in the $40-$45 range. I've got literally a lifetime of family pics and vids. I've got 3 copies backed up at home (and barn), and each of 4 adult kids have a complete back up.
I very much like western digital
My old external hard drive is a WD. It was on my Windows PC, but works on my Mac. But it's very old and doesn't always start up so I can't count on it. But it did last a long time, longer than the G-Drive.
Thanks.
I strongly recommend the Western Digital My Passport Ultra for Mac. I use one for Time Machine, and another as a bootable clone.
You should use two drive at different location and alternate between them.
I usually chose the biggest available in 2.5" currently 5TB and take one of each remaining manufacturer.
They are not the most robust (3.5" are better), but the fact that there is no external power required means less risk for the mac.
That means one Seagate One Touch 5TB and one WD My Passport 5TB or their cheaper alternatives (WD Elements and Seagate Expansion.
If you choose G-DRIVE to have thunderbolt. You could also replace the drive inside the G-DRIVE it depends on which version of G-DRIVE you have, but if it's a 3.5" drive,
a good resource for failure rate is:
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2022/
An high performance alternative is The Samsung T7 Shield 2TB SSD it's cheap and very fast. But 2TB is a bit short for a backup.
but the fact that there is no external power required means less risk for the mac.
Does that mean the external drive has its own power supply? My old WD does, but my G-Drive does not.
I don't need thunderbolt. I use adapters that connect to USB hubs that my external drives are plugged into.
3.5" external HDD requires more than the default 5V 500ma provided by USB so a power supply is needed for them. 2.5" model stay within that limit.
Since your G-DRIVE doesn't have a power supply, and is not thunderbolt, there is no interest in repairing it.
Also no need to buy a "mac" version. All external 2.5" drives can be reformatted to APFS as required by the Time Machine.
Stay away from the high end encrypted version with fingerprint sensor. If you need encryption APFS encrypted is good enough.
And beware of the too good to be true deals on Flash storage or SSD, I see plenty of Ads for 16TB SSD, they are of course fake capacity product which will result in data loss.