External drive for Mac for photos
February 12, 2025 8:03 AM Subscribe
Looking for recommendations for external small/portable mac-compatible drive for photo archive.
Pulling 80k photos down from iCloud (using the apple 'request a copy of your data' method since you can't download more than 1k at a time from iCloud itself). And I want a drive (1-2tb) that will be compatible with my 2022 macbook air running Sonoma. I'm looking at Lacie Ruggeds and Western Digital Passports, but open to suggestions bc I really don't know enough to compare.
My priorities are small size and lifespan. It will probably live in my desk drawer for most of its life, and my plan is to re-backup my photos every 6 months or so. I intend for it to be an archive, not a workhorse.
Would love your recommendations!
Pulling 80k photos down from iCloud (using the apple 'request a copy of your data' method since you can't download more than 1k at a time from iCloud itself). And I want a drive (1-2tb) that will be compatible with my 2022 macbook air running Sonoma. I'm looking at Lacie Ruggeds and Western Digital Passports, but open to suggestions bc I really don't know enough to compare.
My priorities are small size and lifespan. It will probably live in my desk drawer for most of its life, and my plan is to re-backup my photos every 6 months or so. I intend for it to be an archive, not a workhorse.
Would love your recommendations!
I also have had issues with WD drives. I'd go for the LaCie.
posted by humbug at 9:35 AM on February 12
posted by humbug at 9:35 AM on February 12
Response by poster: Yes just a backup/archive. Keeping iCloud active.
posted by greta simone at 9:42 AM on February 12
posted by greta simone at 9:42 AM on February 12
i bought one of these to do much the same as you are, and i have had no issues with it. it's an ssd, so it's fast and quiet.
posted by koroshiya at 9:52 AM on February 12
posted by koroshiya at 9:52 AM on February 12
2TB 2.5" mechanisms are basically jellybean commodity parts at this point. Buy two of the cheapest ones you can find and back up onto both of them. That way you can alternate them on each backup session, so even if your computer loses its shit or the cat yoinks the cable and corrupts the one you're actively backing up onto, the other one is still safely in the drawer, unconnected and uninvolved.
Verify the integrity of the whole archive using something like hashdeep before safely disconnecting the current backup drive and putting it back in the drawer.
Personally I far prefer mechanical hard disk drives to SSDs for data archiving purposes as long as they will indeed be getting exercised at least every few months to keep their bearings in good order. When SSDs fail they tend to do so all at once, losing all the data written to them; sometimes a data recovery firm will be able to get that back for you for $$$. When mechanical disk drives fail, they tend to do so far more gradually and will usually warn you ahead of time by making new and/or more noises and getting noticeably slower. They're also still much cheaper per terabyte than SSDs, which means you can afford more redundancy.
posted by flabdablet at 10:09 AM on February 12
Verify the integrity of the whole archive using something like hashdeep before safely disconnecting the current backup drive and putting it back in the drawer.
Personally I far prefer mechanical hard disk drives to SSDs for data archiving purposes as long as they will indeed be getting exercised at least every few months to keep their bearings in good order. When SSDs fail they tend to do so all at once, losing all the data written to them; sometimes a data recovery firm will be able to get that back for you for $$$. When mechanical disk drives fail, they tend to do so far more gradually and will usually warn you ahead of time by making new and/or more noises and getting noticeably slower. They're also still much cheaper per terabyte than SSDs, which means you can afford more redundancy.
posted by flabdablet at 10:09 AM on February 12
Oh, and whichever drive you settle on, don't buy it from or through Amazon. There are a lot of shonks selling used drives for new prices on that platform.
posted by flabdablet at 10:14 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 10:14 AM on February 12 [1 favorite]
In my experience, although hard-drive mechanisms themselves may be reliable, the controller boards are not necessarily, so getting the cheapest (assembled) drive possible can be a false economy. This may not matter for a drive you leave unplugged 99% of the time, but I mention it FWIW. I'm currently using the 2 TB spinny disk version of this as my backup drive and so far, so good. If I were going with a SSD, I'd use a different enclosure from OWC but I'd still buy from them.
posted by adamrice at 10:24 AM on February 12
posted by adamrice at 10:24 AM on February 12
I got a LaCie to use for Time Machine backups and it died after just under a year. I got a warranty replacement from LaCie, that one just died, also after around a year. I opted to get a Samsung instead of yet another LaCie. I only do scheduled back-ups once every 24 hours, it's not like I worked the LaCies to death.
posted by licentious_modulations at 11:23 AM on February 12
posted by licentious_modulations at 11:23 AM on February 12
The SanDisk SSD drives that koroshiya linked to had massive embarassing failures a few years ago. SanDisk’s response was…not terrific. I haven’t heard if they’ve been better recently but it’s also getting harder and harder to separate the wheat from the AI chaff when it comes to hardware reviews and reporting.
posted by bcwinters at 11:29 AM on February 12
posted by bcwinters at 11:29 AM on February 12
Nthing the bad experiences with Western Digital. I don't have an alternative for you, but choose another manufacturer.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 1:29 PM on February 12
posted by gentlyepigrams at 1:29 PM on February 12
Anecdote: LaCie is highly rated, but the last one we got failed. We've been using their drives for years.
posted by ovvl at 3:03 PM on February 12
posted by ovvl at 3:03 PM on February 12
For one anec-data point: I look to Crucial for computer memory. in Augus 2023, I attached a new Crucial X8 1TB Portable SSDs each of our iMacs, as Time Machine drives. My first backup - the entire contents of my internal boot-drive, finished in a couple of minutes; the hourly backups take well under a minute. On my machine, that's about 85GB.
I know your use-case is different than mine but your first backup of 80K photos at (guessing) 2 MB each to a mechanical drive could take - quite a while. If you're planning to back up the full set of photos at every backup, you'd incur that overhead every time.
posted by TruncatedTiller at 3:13 PM on February 12
I know your use-case is different than mine but your first backup of 80K photos at (guessing) 2 MB each to a mechanical drive could take - quite a while. If you're planning to back up the full set of photos at every backup, you'd incur that overhead every time.
posted by TruncatedTiller at 3:13 PM on February 12
Response by poster: I’ve already done the math on how long it will take, that isn’t my question.
posted by greta simone at 4:01 PM on February 12
posted by greta simone at 4:01 PM on February 12
Seriously, they're all going to fail eventually. Everybody loves to hate on the last vendor whose drive caused them major data loss, but it's all a crap shoot.
Reliability differences only really show up in large-scale surveys and there's at least as much variation across models as across manufacturers. Best strategy for keeping data safe is, as always, redundancy.
If you do buy two drives, as I believe you should, get them from different manufacturers. That way they're even less likely to fail at the same time.
posted by flabdablet at 11:01 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
Reliability differences only really show up in large-scale surveys and there's at least as much variation across models as across manufacturers. Best strategy for keeping data safe is, as always, redundancy.
If you do buy two drives, as I believe you should, get them from different manufacturers. That way they're even less likely to fail at the same time.
posted by flabdablet at 11:01 PM on February 12 [2 favorites]
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The LaCie Ruggeds are totally fine for this purpose. I don’t really think of them as actually rugged—I wouldn’t toss one around—but they will be OK if they get jostled in a drawer or you dribble some coffee near one. I think the Passports are kind of finicky and wouldn’t buy one.
None of these drives are really repairable if something goes wrong so they should only be one part of a robust backup plan, not the only storage location for any files.
posted by bcwinters at 8:23 AM on February 12 [3 favorites]