Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt 3 External Backup Drives

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I’ve been backing up my Mac (using Time Machine) to a Drobo 5N NAS, but using Time Machine with a NAS hasn’t been too reliable lately (the backups keep deleting and re-creating themselves after verification issues).

I’m considering either moving my Time Machine backups to external drives, or leaving the Time Machine backups on the NAS then creating bootable clone backups to external drives using SuperDuper (since I have a license for it already). That would then give me another backup of my data as well.

I’m having a difficult time finding the backup drives I need.

For my old (2011) iMac, its connections are USB 2, Firewire 800, and I believe Thunderbolt 1 (possibly 2, but I think it’s 1). Thunderbolt would be the fastest connection I could use for the iMac.

For my iMac Pro, its connections are USB 3, USB-C, and Thunderbolt 3. Thunderbolt 3 would be the fastest connection I could use for the iMac Pro.

For size, about 2TB would suffice for my backup needs, especially if I do a bootable clone over Time Machine (since my internal drives are only 1TB).

In terms of hard drive vs SSD, regular hard drive would suffice for backups since I’m only using them for backups and not data storage/file sharing.

In terms of brands, I’ve had the most luck with Western Digital drives.

In terms of power, bus-powered would be ideal, even those these are desktop Macs, since I’m running out of power ports in my power strips, and I’ve extended everything enough where I don’t want to overload my sockets anymore than I already have.

I’m having a difficult time finding two drives that fit these bills. I could do external enclosures plus throw in my own drive if need be. For the older iMac, if I can’t find a Thunderbolt 1 or 2 drive, I could always use a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter if need be.

Does anyone have any recommendations on these drives? I’ve been searching up and down for them but still not exactly sure what I need, especially for the iMac Pro since many Thunderbolt 3 drives look to only be USB-C drives.

Nathan Parker

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Individual backups per machine is a lot of work for not much benefit. assuming the NAS is reliable. And it can’t be automated.

The easiest option would be to get one drive and copy the backups from the NAS, but then you need to decide whether you want to be able to restore on any machine, or just copy it back to the NAS.

Maybe get a USB stick as well and create the bootable recovery on that depending on which machine needs to be recovered. That will work on all machines with the HDD as the long term backup.

cheers, Paul

p.s. don’t forget to check your backup disks are behaving.

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Nathan Parker

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Nathan,

I work mostly at home and connect, occasionally, to a network via VPN to use a NASA machine, and when I do, the backups are taken care of by the Sysadmin at the NASA center where those machines are situated. I do this mostly to test the software developed at home with data available at the center.

Most of the time I work on my own MacBook Pro ca. mid-2015 at home and I do my own backups at home. It has USB 3.0 ports (one big reason I bought this Mac’s model) and I back up my data on an external hard disk using Time Machine.

This external HD came with an USB to USB cable about 1′ 3″ long (that is, not counting the two connectors), and either an USB 3.0 or 3.1 jack; the HD gets its power through this USB connector that is, I believe, what you would like to have. It has a 4 TB capacity and, again it is a HD, not an SSD. The brand is Seagate, the model is “Backup Plus.” It has performed nicely, so far, although I’ve only been using it for 2.5 years. I bought it from Amazon.

I do not have it connected to my Mac all the time, only at weekly intervals. I imagine that using a network (NAS) to store your backups might be a better option for what you do, but I am giving you this information in case you might find it useful. Good luck.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Nathan Parker

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[Marty]

It appears to me as though there’s a cable that would allow you to connect a Mac’s Type-C USB port to a Micro-B USB 3.1 or 3.0 enabled device:  https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Type-C-Micro-B-Gen2-Cable/dp/B01GGKYIHS

If I read this correctly, you could connect a WD 3.0 USB external drive to your Mac Pro.

Would this do the job for you?

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Marty.
• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Marty.

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Nathan Parker

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I like the convenience of backing up to my Drobo NAS since it centralizes all of my backups. The NAS itself is reliable in general for accessing files and for file sharing.

However, Time Machine keeps deleting my entire Time Machine backups and re-creating the backups. The backups keep corrupting. After upgrading to Catalina, Time Machine is failing completely, and isn’t backing up at all (I have a ticket in with Apple Support). The previous backup also corrupted, so with the exception of my online backup, I have no local backup of my iMac Pro at the moment.

I had considered moving away from Time Machine to another more NAS-friendly backup solution. I looked into Carbon Copy Cloner since I’ve used it for bootable clones in the past (SuperDuper doesn’t support NAS drives), but it seems they don’t recommend NAS drives:

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/choosing-backup-drive

Disk image files can eventually become corrupted if frequent network connectivity loss occurs while they are mounted, or when free space on the underlying NAS volume becomes constrained. If you’ve seen a recommendation from Time Machine to delete and recreate the backup on a network volume, that’s the same underlying issue, and we’d make the same suggestion if the disk image can’t be mounted.

This is exactly what is happening to me with my Drobo NAS.

I have a lifetime license to Arq. Arq seems to offer better support for NAS drives since it’s optimized for cloud storage (I use it to backup my MacBook Pro to online backup using WebMate Drive). The issue with Arq is the current version doesn’t support concurrent backups to NAS and online. The new version does, but it cannot read backup files from previous versions yet, so if I install it now, I’d have to wipe and re-do my online backup (and my Internet has been too funky for that to occur). I may look at trying it later this summer once they iron out those couple of issues. In the meantime, I’ll see what Apple Support says with Time Machine and the NAS.

If all else fails, I’ll need some form of local backup using a traditional external drive. I can either use Time Machine or bootable clone using SuperDuper, but I’m still having issues finding external drives that fit the descriptions above. On the old iMac, Thunderbolt would be the fastest connection and on my iMac Pro, Thunderbolt 3 would be the fastest connection. I’d mainly be using these to restore each individual machine if the internal drives die.

Unless there’s another Mac app that can backup to NAS drives that’s more reliable than Time Machine, then I could simply kick Time Machine to the curb, use the third-party backup software, then if the drive dies, use a USB flash drive or Internet Recovery to reinstall macOS and restore the files from the NAS. Something that would restore similar to Time Machine would be great.

Thanks!

Nathan Parker

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Nathan: Perhaps you could elaborate on this statement so one can see what is your problem with finding suitable external drives? “If all else fails, I’ll need some form of local backup using a traditional external drive. I can either use Time Machine or bootable clone using SuperDuper, but I’m still having issues finding external drives that fit the descriptions above.”

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Nathan Parker

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Sure thing. I’m having issues finding a drive fitting the descriptions I’ve mentioned. What I’m looking for are:

• Around 2TB per drive (don’t really need a ton higher than that)
• Bus powered preferred (I’m running out of power sockets)
• Regular hard drives would work (SSDs would be overkill for my needs)
• For connections, I’d need Thunderbolt 3 for the iMac Pro and Thunderbolt 1 or 2 for the older iMac. Some Thunderbolt 3 drives I see on Apple.com and other stores don’t seem to be real Thunderbolt 3 drives, which has been confusing. For the older iMac, I could use a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter if I can’t find a Thunderbolt 1 or 2 drive.
• In terms of brands, I’ll try any, but Western Digital have been rock solid for me.
• I would be willing to buy separate enclosures and add my own drives if need be.

That’s if I can’t find a reliable way to continue to backup to my NAS. I have a hefty investment in my Drobo NAS and really enjoy centralized backups, so if there is some better software for Macs that supports NAS backups than how Time Machine has been acting, I’d be willing to try it.

Nathan Parker

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This might be of interest :
How to use any Thunderbolt device on any Thunderbolt Mac—and we mean any

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Nathan Parker

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Nathan: You can have a 2 TB HD, powered through its own connector (no need for a separate cable to plug on a power strip or a wall socket). You can use as a connector a dongle USB 3.0 – Thunderbird 3 to connect to the MacBook, as it is likely the HD will have an USB 3.0 socket. I am not sure if there are dongles USB 3.0 to Thunderbird 2, for your iMac. Is that the real problem? You mentioned using an adapter Thunderbird 3 to 2, so couldn’t use a dongle and the adapter plugged together, USB 3.0 to Thunderbird 3 + Thunderbird 3 to Thunderbird 2? Not terribly elegant but that would not bother me, at least (I’m not the sensitive type.)

Here is a Western Digital with an USB 3.0 socket, for both Windows PCs and Macs, that seems to fit the above description and might fulfill your own preferences:

https://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Elements-Portable-External/dp/B06W55K9N6/ref=psdc_595048_t1_B07VTFN6HM

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Nathan Parker

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A NAS is just a disk drive for backup purposes. If the NAS is timing out / disconnecting you have a more fundamental issue. Does it occur on all machines or only one – is it the NAS or the Mac?

cheers, Paul

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Nathan Parker

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@Alex Yep, that’s the adapter I was thinking about.

@Oscar I think that one is USB 3 only and doesn’t support Thunderbolt. I have used those drives with DVR’s, but I don’t think they support Thunderbolt since Thunderbolt’s wiring is a whole new ballgame.

@Just the iMac Pro at the moment. Watching the old iMac to see if it’ll glitch on it or remain solid. Trying to see if there are any issues with Catalina, Time Machine, and NAS devices. There is an issue with Catalina 10.15.4 and large file transfers causing the Mac to freeze. I wonder if the bug is similar to what is occurring with Time Machine.

Nathan Parker

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Nathan: “There is an issue with Catalina 10.15.4 and large file transfers causing the Mac to freeze.”

How large, very roughly, is a file transfer large enough to freeze the Mac? (Assuming that yours is not a Mac much older or much newer than my MacBook Pro ca. mid 2015.)

I probably will have to install Catalina in the not too distant future, so I would like to know if this is something I might run up against or not after I do that, because of the way I usually work. If I am likely to run up against this freezing problem before it gets resolved, then it would be worth my while to try to follow this issue. Mojave, so far, has not given me this kind of trouble.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Nathan Parker

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Here’s the article:

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/04/06/macos-10-5-4-kernel-panic-crashing-issues/

I wonder if backing up 300GB to my NAS over Time Machine counts as part of the bug.

It seems to be fixed in 10.15.5. I’ll find out from Apple if Time Machine is included in the bug.

I would have waited for 10.15.5 if I could, but I needed to get moved to Catalina when I did since there are things I needed to do on Catalina.

Nathan Parker

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OscarCP

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Drobo emailed me an offer from Retrospect Backup (a company in their family) for free 90 day access to Retrospect Backup. I have an email into their sales department asking about it. There’s a perpetual license and an annual subscription license, so I’m asking how often they release new versions to determine which would be best for my needs (I’d prefer perpetual).

I may take them up on the 90 day trial and compare it to Time Machine. It seems they support NAS drives well with it, and reviews on PC World are solid from a long time user.

I’ll still talk with Apple Thursday to see what’s up with Time Machine, but this may be another option to keep using my NAS for backups if Time Machine continues to act flakey.

Nathan Parker

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Had a good talk with Apple multiple times this week. Here are the details.

We attempted another backup with Catalina and Time Machine to my Drobo NAS. It looked like it was backing up, but then my internal drive storage decreased during the backup. Turns out my Mac was creating local Time Machine snapshots during the backup. Apple sent me this support article on what happened there. Rebooting my Mac cleared the snapshots (since they ended up eating up about 11GB of space), although there is a way to delete them using Terminal as well if I had needed to. The backup ultimately failed.

Apple reached out to Drobo for me. Drobo informed Apple that the Drobo is not optimized for backups over Time Machine, and they told Apple it’s a hit and miss experience. Sometimes they work, sometimes they fail. The experience simply isn’t reliable. Apple also communicated with their engineers who confirmed they have tested Drobos with Time Machine and had the same experience I am having. Their engineers even told my senior advisor that even Apple’s own Time Capsule NAS devices were flakey with Time Machine, and Apple built the Time Capsule particularly for use with Time Machine! Apple is even slowly phasing out support for Time Capsules with Time Machine.

So the bottom line is I have two options:

1. If I use Time Machine, the only reliable method is to plug a hard drive into the back of my Mac, since Time Machine and NAS drives is a flakey and unreliable experience. I finally found a Thunderbolt 3 drive (the fastest drive performance I can receive with my iMac Pro connection). This G-Drive would work. It’s not cheap, plus I’d have to find a free power socket to power it on, but it’s one option. It does have a Western Digital drive inside, so it’d be a rock-solid drive. The closest alternative is a LaCie drive. It has slightly slower performance and a slightly higher cost though, and it has a Seagate inside, and I’ve had better experience with Western Digital. For my older iMac, I’ll either need to find a Thunderbolt 2 variant of one of these drives, or Apple has a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 Adapter if I needed to convert the connection.
2. I can keep using the Drobo NAS and dump Time Machine. Retrospect is the backup software from the family company that also makes Drobo, so the software should be optimized for Drobo. However, I’m a little confused of their product offerings (trying to get sales to clarify). There’s a Solo option that would purchase for each Mac. There’s also a Desktop option where I would centrally manage the backups from one Mac, but both Macs would backup. Plus there are subscription variants, perpetual variants, and perpetual variants with either annual support options or options where I would just purchase upgrades when I once. I’m a little confused on my purchase options, but hoping sales can point me in the right direction.

One vendor I order most of my tech from offers both the hard drives and Retrospect, so no matter what option I choose (or even if I slowly chose both), I could order everything from a single vendor through my sales rep which is nice.

Nathan Parker

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I’m awaiting a quote on Retrospect from my tech rep and will likely purchase it for both Macs for backing up to my Drobo NAS. In the meantime, I did pick up the G Drive with Thunderbolt 3 and will likely pickup another G Drive with Thunderbolt 2 to backup my Macs over Time Machine. It’s been pretty reliable for using Time Machine.

So for Time Machine, Thunderbolt drives are the way to go over NAS devices.

Although for my Drobo NAS, Retrospect should work as well.

Which in this case I’ll have two backups of my data (in addition to the cloud), which doesn’t hurt.

If I wanted another backup of my data, I guess I could partition the G Drive and make a bootable clone with SuperDuper.

Nathan Parker

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According to this article, SuperDuper is a good alternative to Time Machine. As you already have it…
They also like Get Backup Pro @ $35 for up to 5 machines.

cheers, Paul

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Nathan Parker

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SuperDuper is solid. I’ve used it in the past even when Time Machine was flakey when beta testing new Mac updates (when I used to do that). I’ve set mine up to go ahead and clone my drive once a week. I could do daily, but since Time Machine is already doing hourly, weekly seems enough for now. I have Time Machine on one partition and SuperDuper on the other.

Plus I’ll purchase Retrospect so I can resume using my Drobo NAS for backups as well.

That’ll give me three onsite backups plus cloud backups for critical data. Basically with this approach I should be set no matter what.

Nathan Parker

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Finally got the quotes back on Retrospect. I ended up purchasing a one year Solo subscription for both Macs. They managed to get the price down to $30 per Mac per year, so I went for it.

I have Retrospect running on both Macs tonight. The iMac running High Sierra seems to be successfully backing up to the Drobo NAS without issues. Need to run the backup a little longer to ensure, but so far, so good. On the iMac Pro running Catalina, I’m running into an issue with a program freeze when creating a “media set” (that’s what is required to tell Retrospect what to backup. I have a ticket into Retrospect Support to see what needs to be done to resolve it.

Which is primary reason I went subscription over perpetual: support. Solo perpetual doesn’t include any support, Solo subscription does. I didn’t want to purchase an app with zero support, so I went subscription. Since Retrospect will release a new version at least once a year, even if I upgraded to each new version, I’d be paying close to what I’d be paying for the subscription, so the subscription avenue isn’t too bad. I can always drop the old iMac if I ever don’t need the subscription to it. I went for Solo versus “Desktop” since “Desktop” was way overkill for me and more useful for those with Windows PCs or multiple machines they need to centralize backups with. I can fully review Retrospect once I’ve used it a little bit longer.

Bad news on SuperDuper is 10.15.5 mucked with it. SuperDuper is working on a workaround. I did partition my G Drive and clone my drive using SuperDuper before 10.15.5, and it worked well. Once the 10.15.5 broken issue is resolved, I’ll go back to using it.

Plus Time Machine is working well with my G Drive, and I’ll probably eventually put another G Drive on the old iMac for Time Machine and SuperDuper. With Time Machine, SuperDuper, and Retrospect, I should have plenty of backups to go around (plus the iMac Pro has online backups), and I can still use my Drobo NAS with Retrospect in addition to using Time Machine and SuperDuper with the G Drives.

On the other hand, I have an old Firewire 400 drive connected to my 12″ PowerBook. Time Machine at times is about as fast on it as the G Drive over Thunderbolt 3, and I did a complete system restore with it recently, and it worked flawlessly. Some of my old tech is still kicking and in some cases running as well as my high-end gear.

Nathan Parker

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