Today is World Backup Day, the “day to back up and better protect your data.” You are backing up your data, aren’t you? If not, you’re inviting disaster.
There are several great external drives and cloud services for backing up the data on your Mac. (A quick aside: it would be nice if Apple made iCloud Mac back-ups as simple and convenient as it has for iOS and iPadOS devices.) WD sent me an external drive that was almost the perfect external Time Machine backup for my 16-inch MacBook Pro: My Passport.
It has a stylish design that fits in the palm of your hand and there’s plenty of space to store, organize, and share your photos, videos, music, and documents. It’s affordable and comes in a variety of colors — including black, which looks great with my MB Pro.
One niggling complaint: My Passport is formatted for Windows 10+ to deliver plug-and-play storage out of the box. However, with WD software, you can also download the NTFS driver for macOS, so you can work between operating systems without reformatting.
My biggest issue with the My Passport is that its connectivity port uses a Micro-USB Type-B connector to match the included cable (a USB 2.0 in the review model I received). This slows data transfer to USB 2.0 speeds.
That’s why I’ll stick with my favorite all-time external drive: My Passport for Mac. It’s a hard drive, not SSD, but it works great for Time Machine backups. And I have an extra one for storing files on when my Mac’s built-in drive gets too full.
However, if MyPassport interests you, you can get one for US52.99 – $109.99 (1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 5TB) at Western Digital and Amazon.
Other WD drives you might consider:
° My Book: It’s equipped with backup software for Windows and Apple Time Machine compatibility for Mac. It has built-in hardware encryption with password protection. It costs $94.99 – $369.99 (4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 12TB, 14TB, 16TB, 18TB) at Western Digital and Amazon.
° WD Drive for Chromebook: Certified as Works With Chromebook, the WD Drive for Chromebook lets you add extra storage for files, photos, videos and more. It costs $79.99 (2TB) at Western Digital and Amazon.
My biggest want in a backup would be something like Carbon Copy Clone—except with the previous version of MacOS. If a MacOS upgrade breaks something, I want to boot up my Mac as though it were yesterday!