Using Time Machine for Extra Backup

<p>I use two external hard drives to back up photos and some documents. I want to add Time Machine as an addition. Two questions: will a 500GB drive be sufficient for a 1 Terabyte Mac, and can any ole hard drive be configured for the job or is something Mac specific required.</p>

<p>Only you can figure out what size, but a 500g drive is probably enough for now. If a small external drive in 1tb or 2tb is only a bit more, get one of those, extra space never hurts.<br>

Any old hard drive can be configured for the job. Almost any drive you buy will be formatted as a windows drive, you should reformat it to the native mac format, HFS+, for use as a time machine drive. You do the reformatting using disk utility.</p>

<p>Sanford, You can use Western Digital or Seagate hard drives with your mac. The internal hard drive in your mac is most likely a Seagate drive. There are few things to determine before purchasing your hard drive(s) HD:<br>

1) Are you using Thunderbolt to connect the external drives? Thunderbolt is the fastest way to connect external drives. USB3 is the next fastest. But if your computer is older and doesn't have either ports then getting a faster speed hard drives will not matter.<br>

2) Are these external HDs connected at all times? or you'll have many HDs and continue to swap them as they get full. This will depend on how often you shoot and save files and will need to create a content page so that you can access the specific images.<br>

3) Be careful with the new OS Yosemite. This OS has been causing problems with corrupting external HD. I have two Western Digital drives that got corrupted and can't access anything from the drives.<br>

4) Get a cloud storage service as a backup. incase there is a fire or flood. Your files will be safe. Google Drive or iCloud storage is a great way to go.<br>

In my opinion, 500GB is too small especially shooting RAW and JPEGs. Get 1TB drives and use them as a backup.<br>

I hope this helps you.</p>

<p>Thanks Greg and Jim. I guess my best option is a 1TB from one of the higher rated companies like WD. $50 range minus some unused rewards $ from B&H. Reformatting look easy enough. SSD 1TB still too expensive.</p>

<p>Any old drive formatted to HFS + will do, but I would get at least 1tb. Also, time machine back-up is more for recovery situations, not so much for data storage. I use external drives just to maintain and store my photos and other data files. i use the time machine to be able to restore my start-up drive should I have to replace it for some reason. My I don't use it correctly, but its kind of like a bootable clone to use to restore.</p>