Best External Hard Drive for Mac 2023

[macuser2023]

Hello! I am looking to purchase at least two new external hard drives. One to be used for Time Machine and one to be used to go between home and office if needed. Brian, what do you recommend? I found an older post with G-Drives recommended but those have all been discontinued. Please let me know if there are any new drives that are still for sale you would recommend - thank you!

[Brian]

Wow! You are right, most of the drives I'm used to are Discontinued. G-Drives are still around, they just have been purchased by SandDisk. In fact, SanDisk now owns Western Digital.

For your Time Machine Drive, you want at least double of your Internal Mac's HD; if you have a 1TB Macintosh HD, you are looking at purchasing at least a 2TB or even 4TB HD. The Time Machine Drive must be formatted properly, to the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Partition Type. Otherwise, Time Machine won't see the drive. Here is a G-Drive I found on Amazon. Times are changing, and it seems that the current G-Drives are either "Rugged" or are slowly switch over to SSD Drives. Which is fine, unless you need something like 12TB for Data Storage.

Speaking of which, how large of a Hard Drive will you need for the Drive that will go back and forth between Home & Office? I have one of these Sandisk Drives for that purpose, and they work extremely well. I'd recommend using a SSD External Drive for Traveling. That Sandisk SSD is smaller than a Magic Mouse!

[macuser2023]

2 hours ago, Brian said:

Wow! You are right, most of the drives I'm used to are Discontinued. G-Drives are still around, they just have been purchased by SandDisk. In fact, SanDisk now owns Western Digital.

For your Time Machine Drive, you want at least double of your Internal Mac's HD; if you have a 1TB Macintosh HD, you are looking at purchasing at least a 2TB or even 4TB HD. The Time Machine Drive must be formatted properly, to the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Partition Type. Otherwise, Time Machine won't see the drive. Here is a G-Drive I found on Amazon. Times are changing, and it seems that the current G-Drives are either "Rugged" or are slowly switch over to SSD Drives. Which is fine, unless you need something like 12TB for Data Storage.

Speaking of which, how large of a Hard Drive will you need for the Drive that will go back and forth between Home & Office? I have one of these Sandisk Drives for that purpose, and they work extremely well. I'd recommend using a SSD External Drive for Traveling. That Sandisk SSD is smaller than a Magic Mouse!

Thank you so much! My current mac's internal HD is 2TB so for Time Machine I'll be looking then at a minimum of 4TB. Should I look for a larger capacity as you mentioned you may want up to a 4TB for a 1TB internal HD?

For in between Home and Office, I was also thinking of 4TB. I am going to order the linked drive - thank you!.

[Brian]

4TB is fine for a Time Machine Drive. Seriously. 

Hit me up for info when the new drives arrive, I want to make sure BOTH are setup correctly before you put anything on them. No software is required, you have everything already built into the OS to get the drives going. Takes like 5 min each if you go slow.  

[macuser2023]

I will be able to set up the new drives by the end of the week! Thank you.

[Brian]

Cool Beans! Let me know when you are ready. I want to make sure they have the correct partition type, as one kind will only work with Time Machine.