Does Time Machine delete old backups. The Time Machine keeps adding backup files as long as there is enough space on the backup disk. When the drive is full the Time Machine deletes old backups to free space for new data. While the Time Machine deletes old versions of the file it never deletes the latest one. Most will use Time Machine when booting new Macs. On startup, a new Mac asks if you want to start fresh, or boot from a backup. Using Time Machine backups will make you feel like you picked up where you left off. Like most services Apple creates, Time Machine is in both your System Preferences menu and is available as an app for the Mac. External drive connected to your Mac. Time Machine can back up to an external drive connected to. Time Machine is an application that helps the user to take a timely backup of the data from the computer on to a preferred location such as external hard drive, an extra partition on the internal disk, or time machine capsule. Occasionally you might find issues with Time Machine not backing up data or getting stuck at preparing backup. Time Machine might back up the whole disk image even if you have creased only a few files in the other OS. Tell Time Machine to exclude those files from the backup.
I’ve been using Time Machine, a built-in backup program developed by Apple since I bought my first Mac. I tried multiple external hard drives, and I believe I know a thing or two about the process and type of hardware that works best with the Time Machine.
The best external hard drive for Time Machine backups on Macs is Samsung T7 SSD Touch. It provides the best disk performance required for backing up data: up to 1000 MB/s for both reads and writes. Additionally, Samsung T7 comes with fingerprint security, not available in other comparable drives.
If you don’t have time to read the entire post you can check my top 2 picks. However, I suggest to read reviews of all drives down below, as well as the buyer’s guide.
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How to Choose Hard Drives for Time Machine
Brand name
There are certain qualities that I look for when considering hard drives for any backup.
The main factor in selection is reliability.
It doesn’t matter how fast the disk is, how sleek it looks, or how good the discount was on Amazon.
If the drive fails when you need it, then it’s not worth even a penny.
The thing is that all hard drives fail.
There is not a single model that is 100% fail free.
The difference is the failure rate.
Devices produced by well known established companies have lower rates compared to drives from unknown manufacturers.
If Amazon is your choice when it comes to purchasing anything online, be aware that not all user reviews are real.
So many times, I’ve seen several thousands of 5-star reviews on no name devices, and at the same time, good devices get a couple of hundreds of reviews, and the average is 3.5.
How is it possible?
I think we all know the answer: some reviews on Amazon are fake.
So, what’s my point?
If you get anything from this article, I want to remind you that brands matter when reliability is the most important factor in choosing a backup drive.
If you are not familiar with which manufacturers have beenon the market for decades, here is the list (not complete) of companies whichproduce quality hard drives:
- Seagate
- Western Digital (WD)
- Samsung
- Toshiba
- Buffalo
Capacity
The second most important factor is storage capacity. Ideally, you want as much storage as you can get. However, we need to be practical, because extra bytes come with extra price.
When the difference in price between 1TB and 2TB may not be too high, when we are moving up in size, doubling the storage comes with more than double price.
We want to keep a balance between capacity and the price, if possible.
So, what’s the best size for the Time Machine backup drive?
The minimum size for a Time Machine backup drive should be at least twice the size of the Mac primary storage. For instance, if MacBook’s disk size is 128GB, then 256GB will be the minimum for a backup, and 1TB would be the best choice.
In other words, the best size for Time Machine backup drive 4x to 8x of the size of the primary disk, when 2x is a minimum.
When Time Machine runs for the first time, it takes the full backup of data on the disk. After that, it keeps deltas (only files that have changed).
Time Machine keeps local snapshots, hourly snapshots for the last 24 hours, daily, and weekly snapshots as storage permits. If the backup disk gets full, the Time Machine starts deleting the oldest snapshots.
This means if you don’t have enough space, your ability to go back will be limited.
Performance
One of the biggest complaints about Time Machine is the fact that it is slow.
It is much slower than other (commercial) backup solutions because it runs in the background, so it doesn’t impact any programs you are using at the time the backup process runs.
If you want to know how to speed up the backup process, check my article here.
One of the ways to improve the time it takes to backup is getting a faster drive.
Pay attention to write and read performance.
Writes are important when taking backups, and reads are significant when restoring.
Compatibility
When browsing various drives on Amazon or Best Buy, you can see that some of them marked as compatible with Macs.
Contrary to what you might think, this does not mean that you cannot use drives described as PC drives.
This really means that the disk was preformatted for either PC or Mac, and you can use it right away with the corresponding computer.
However, almost all drives can be used with Macs as long asthey have proper connectors. You just need to know how to prepare the drive forMac, i.e., format it.
What disk format is best for Time Machine?
Time Machine only recognizes the drives formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), also known as HFS+. If the drive is formatted with different format types, the Time Machine will offer to erase the disk and reformat it before use.
To know the current format of the external drive, use the Disk Utility app.
One way to start it is by using Spotlight Search: hold Command and hit Spacebar. In the search bar type “Disk Utility” and hit Enter.
In the Disk Utility app, select the drive on the left.
On the right, under the name of the drive, there will be information about the current format.
To reformat the disk in a new format, click on the Erase icon at the top. Note that all information on the disk will be wiped out.
In the pop-up window type in the new name for the drive (orkeep the old one). And pick Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as Format choice.
Hit Erase.
Once the format is complete, the drive is ready to be usedas a Time Machine backup drive.
Connector
As mentioned above, all drives are compatible with Applecomputers as long as they have proper connectors.
So, check your Mac for extension ports.
If you have a newer Mac, then you need a USB-C hard drive, older ones support USB (2.0, 3.0, or 3.1) or Thunderbolt. Pick the drive that supports all Mac ports.
Quick Note: Many people use USB-A hard drives with Macs equipped with USB-C ports and use adapters. Unfortunately, with such configuration data transfer speed suffers because the adapter becomes a bottleneck.
Price
And last, but not the least – price.
Yes, price is important, but I want to reiterate the importance of reliability over the price. If you want to save on price, then go with a slower drive, but don’t go with a cheap no name brand.
Best External Hard Drives for Time Machine Backup
SAMSUNG T7 Touch Portable SSD
The device is so small that it can fit in your shirt pocket. It’s a little bigger than a matchbox and weighs just 2 oz.
As with any SSD drive, T7 has no moving parts. It has a sturdy metal body, so it can handle drops of up to 2 meters.
It comes with two cables: USB and USB-C, which is super helpful if you have old and new Macs.
So you can use the USB cable with the old MacBook, copy data on it and then plug it into a new MacBook with TouchBar and copy again.
And T7 is crazy fast. The read and write speed of T7 is almost double of corresponding values of older model T5: up to 1000 MB/s for both reads and writes.
I was able to run the Virtual Box image directly from Samsung T7.
I never thought it would be possible because I tried to run VMs from external drives before, and they were super slow, even unusable.
With T7, however, I didn’t even know that I am running VM on the external hard drive. Partially, it was due to the fast SSD inside and partially due to the USB-C connector.
Additionally, T7 comes with fingerprint security (optional), which is very important for someone who’s doing Time Machine backups.
T7 supports up to 4 fingerprints and works similar to MacBook Touch ID.
Samsung T7 is backed by a 3-year limited warranty.
![Work Work](https://www.apfelschule.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Bildschirmfoto-2020-02-05-um-16.30.03.png)
Pros:
- Data Transfer Speeds
- Fingerprint security
- Support USB-A and USB-C
Cons:
WD 5TB My Passport for Mac
If you need a larger drive than T7, then check out Western Digital My Passport for Mac Portable External Hard Drive. Its upper limit is 5TB.
Let’s start with the following fact: My Passport supportsboth USB 3.0 and USB-C ports. It comes with two cables, and depending on whichport you have on your Mac, you can use one or the other.
The transfer speed of USB 3.0 is limited to 10.0 Gbit/s max.The max speed for USB-C is 40.0 Gbit/s, four times faster thansecond-generation 3.0.
Overall the read and write speed of My Passport is around110 MB/s.
The best thing about My Passport for Mac is that it already preformatted for macOS.
You can start using the drive immediately. No need to mess with disk utilities and other stuff. Just plug it in and start your Time Machine backups.
My Passport is a little bigger than T7 and has the following dimensions:
- Depth 4.22 in/10.71cm
- Width 2.95 in/7.49cm
- Height 0.75 in/1.91cm
- Weight 0.51 lb/0.21kg
Pros:
- Budget-friendly
- Preformated for Mac
- Size limit up to 5TB
Cons:
Toshiba Canvio Basics Portable External Hard Drive
If you need a reliable external hard drive under $100, thenconsider Toshiba Canvio Basics 4TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0.
This is not the fastest drive, but it’s reliable and cheap.You can buy a 4TB drive for less than $100, and in my opinion, it’s a greatdeal.
I use this device for my archives.
If I have files that I am not going to use for a while, then instead of deleting them, I shove them to my Toshiba drive. You never know when you will need that old VM, and it’s nice to not waste prime drive space either.
Note, however, this comes only with a USB-A cable, so if you have a new laptop with USB-C ports, you will need to buy an adapter as well.
On the other hand, if you have a pre 2016 MacBook, then this is a good storage for Time Machine backups.
Pros:
- Super reliable
- Not expensive
Cons:
LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C 5TB
I’ve been using LaCie external hard drives for years and they always have been super reliable and crazy fast compared to other models.
You can always recognize them by their orange cover. While I am not particular a fan of their color option, I loved that the device has a rugged surface.
This extremely durable cover provides excellent protection against dust, shock, and water. Which makes it the best choice for someone who travels a lot or even someone who carries the laptop and its accessories to school or work daily.
When it comes to performance LaCie external hard drive provides an ok data transfer speed up to 130MB/s thru the Thunderbolt cable.
If you need a faster drive go with the USB-C SSD option. It will give you up to 510MB/s transfer speed.
Additionally, each LaCie drive comes with a complimentary 3-year recovery service. Thankfully I never needed one, but it’s nice to have such a peace of mind option.
Pros:
- Super reliable
- Shock and water resistant
- Complimentary recovery service
Cons:
LaCie Mobile Drive 5TB
Another drive from LaCie (this time in silver or grey colors): LaCie Mobile.
As it name suggests the drive was designed for mobile people, i.e. specifically for people with laptops.
Unlike it’s orange sibling, LaCie Mobile is not rugged and it is quite small: 0.79 x 3.59 x 4.88 inches.
However, the drive comes with a variety of size options up to 5TB. So, you can store up to 500,000 high resolution photos or up to 165 hours of video footage.
It comes with both USB 3.0 and USB-C cables, so you can use it with older and newer Macs for your backups.
And finally, the drive is already preformatted to work both with Macs and PCs (if you need to).
Pros:
- Portable
- Size options up to 5TB
- Support USB-A and USB-C
Cons:
G-Technology 18TB G-DRIVE
So far, we’ve been discussing 2 to 5 TB drives. While 5TB may sound big, some people may find it not adequate for their needs.
The next hard drive, G-Drive, is massive. It comes with the following size options:
- 4TB
- 8TB
- 10TB
- 12TB
- 14TB
- 18TB
Who in the world may need so much space, you might ask.
Well, if you someone like me, who has 6 MacBooks at home and you don’t want to buy separate hard drives to back each one (and you have to back up regularly), you may buy one huge hard drive and create multiple volumes (for each Mac).
The downside of this approach is that you will not be able to have incremental Time Machine snapshots, because you can’t connect multiple Macs to the same drive physically.
Also, note that this external device is pretty big and it is not strictly portable. It’s best to use with iMac or Mac mini. For MacBooks, I would still stick with Samsung T7.
G-Drive is made by Western Digital and comes with a very sturdy aluminum body. While it does not have SSDs inside, it contains fast enterprise-grade hard disks (7200 rpm).
Pros:
- Massive storage
- Super durable
- Enterprise-grade disks
Cons:
SAMSUNG X5 Portable SSD
While I love, love, love T7, it’s not the fasted device from Samsung. If you are looking for the ultimate speed champion, than check X5.
Samsung X5 is not an SSD. It contains NVMe chip inside which clocks over 2800 MB/s data transfer speed, almost three times the speed of T7!
This means that this drive can transfer a 20GB 4K UHD video from your Mac in just 12 seconds.
In other words, this device will not be a bottleneck when backing up. The Time Machine will be.
And don’t worry about disk overheating, which happens often when massive data is being copied. The X5 has a special heat sink layer which keeps the outer layer below 45° C.
Pros:
- Sequential Read Speed: 2,800 MB/s
- Sequential Write Speed: 2,300 MB/s
- Never overheats
Cons:
BUFFALO LinkStation 220 12TB
While technically not a hard drive, NAS devices from Buffalo are better designed for Time Machine backups.
Ever since Apple discontinued the AirPort Time Capsule, users were forced to use bulky external drives connecting with multiple cables. Very frustrating.
So, if you are looking for AirPort replacement, then check NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices.
One of the most known brands for NAS is Buffalo. They have a number of products available on the market, and most of them are very expensive.
Buffalo LinkStation 220 is a good compromise between functionality, storage capacity and price.
The device is available in a number of storage sizes:
- 2TB
- 4TB
- 6TB
- 8TB
- 12TB
- 16TB
By default, LinkStation 12TB is shipped configured as RAID 1 (Disk mirroring). It means that the available storage is not 12, but 6TB. The upside, however, is that each bit of information is stored twice to improved redundancy.
So, if one of the drives fails, you will not use any information, which is crucial for any computer backups.
Pros:
- Wireless backups
- RAID support
- Multiple size options
Cons: Fortnite ps4 no ps plus.
Takeaway
I can’t tell you how many times I was able to recover my Macs after experiments I run in order to write articles on my site.
I intentionally infected my poor MacBook with malware, installed keyloggers, deleted parts of the operating system, and did other things that normal people usually avoid.
During my experiments, I wasn’t afraid to cause any damage(excluding physical) to my Macs because, after each test, I restored the lastimage from my Time Machine drives.
Unfortunately, not all backups I made were successful. In several cases, I had to use older backups from my secondary drives because my primary drives had failed.
And after going through the school of hard knocks, I realized how important it is to pick a write hard drive for Time Machine.
So, I want again to reiterate my top recommended products, so you can learn from my mistakes.
Time Machine is an important backup utility offered by Apple. Using it, Mac users can take a timely backup of their important files on a PC or a preferred location like an external drive. But sometimes it fails to function and shows error messages like Time Machine not backing up data or getting stuck at preparing backup.
This complicates things. So, if you too are facing this problem in this article, we will talk about ways to resolve it.
Before we move ahead with a detailed explanation, here are some quick troubleshooting fixes.
Quick Ways to Fix Time Machine Backup Failed
- Mac software should be updated.
- Whenever you face Time Machine restore or backup failed error try restarting Mac.
- If you use Airport Time Capsule update firmware.
- Mac should be connected to the same network as the backup drive.
- The connected drive should be switched on.
- When taking backup in third party external drive, make sure the firmware is up to date.
- The external drive should have enough space to store the backup.
- Before backing up data using Time Machine, you should clean all junk and redundant data. For this, you can try using TuneUpMyMac. It is the best Mac optimization and cleaning utility that cleans all unwanted data in no time.
Now, let’s learn how to fix Time Machine Backup Fails Repeatedly.
How to Fix a Time Machine Backup Failed?
Unfortunately, several Mac users, after updating their Mac, face Time Machine backup failed error. If you are one of those unlucky users, here are some troubleshooting tips to fix the problem.
1. Check External hard drive’s file system.
If your external drive doesn’t have enough storage space or is formatted wrongly, you might face Time Backup error. Therefore, you need to make sure the external drive you are using has a native macOS format. The FAT or NTFS file system doesn’t work with Time Machine.
Besides, if the external hard drive is in APFS macOS format then also it won’t work with Time Machine backup.
To check the format of the drive you are using, follow the steps explained below:
1. Attach the external drive to your Mac.
2. Now, launch Finder.
3. Here, look for drive> select it > right-click Get Info.
4. This will show drives format under General information.
If the external drive you are using is having one of the incompatible formats, you’ll need to reformat it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with a GUID Partition Table (GPT).
To do so, you can use Disk Utility. Follow the steps to format the external drive:
1. Attach the external drive to Mac.
2. Open Finder > Go > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
3. Open Disk Utility and choose the attached drive (external) from the left pane.
4. Click Erase present at the top of the Disk Utility window. As shown in the screenshot below:
5. In the new pop-up window that opens rename the drive if you want and alters and drive format to the supported one (Mac OS Extended (Journaled) > Erase.
This will change the format of your external drive and will make it compatible with Time Machine. Now you can take backup using Time Machine.
2. Check free disk space on external drive
![Time machine Time machine](https://kb.promise.com/content/uploads/c4374f6c-3c9b-47a4-a93c-a5b6006c8a69/f2b798a6-8093-483c-a4c9-a73701789dda_screen-shot-2017-03-15-at-2.55.42-pm.jpg?width=690&upscale=false)
If you still face any problem check for the available space on external drive. There should be enough room to back up the Time Machine. If that’s not the case get rid of unwanted files stored on it and free up space for Time Machine backup. Alternatively, you can use a new external hard drive or one with enough available space.
Additional Tip
If you want to backup optimized and clean data using Time Machine, we suggest cleaning junk files, duplicates, unwanted cache, cookies, and other unrequired data from Mac. For this, you can check out the dedicated app known as TuneUpMyMac. This amazing Mac optimizer and cleaning tool helps perform various tasks. Using it, you can optimize your Mac in a single click, delete privacy exposing traces from the browser, junk files, duplicates, large files, old downloads, and more.
It also helps boost speed, and shred deleted data entirely so that it cannot be recovered.
How to fix Time Machine backup fails frequently?
When you backup temporary files, Time Machine backup fails repeatedly. Therefore, to fix this issue, you need to clean up these files.
To do this, follow the steps below:
1. Turn off the Time Machine. To do so click Apple logo > System Preferences > and look for the Time Machine tab.
2. Here, uncheck the Back Up Automatically option.
Next, clean Time Machine’s working files. To do so, follow the steps below:
1. Open Finder > select external hard disk.
2. Now look for folder names Backups.backupdb
3. Please open it and delete the file with .inProgress suffix. For this right-click and select Move to Trash/Bin.
4. Empty the Trash and reboot Mac.
Now, enable Time Machine and try taking backing up data. You should not face any problem.
Check for junk files, and other unwanted data as it might be causing problems.
Sometimes junk files, system cache, temp files, prevent an application from running correctly. In such cases knowing the exact reason for the problem is impossible. Therefore, to deal with such issues, I would recommend using TuneUpMyMac.
This excellent Mac optimizer and cleaner know where to look for junk files, app leftovers, temp files, and other unwanted data that creates problems. It quickly scans Mac for all the unwanted data and helps clean them smoothly. To use TuneUpMyMac and clean junk files, system cache, and duplicates, follow the steps below:
1. Download TuneUpMyMac.
2. Install and click Start System Scan to run the app.
3. Let the scan finish. TuneUpMyMac will not list down all junk and unwanted data.
4. Click Clean Now to delete detected junk files and other unwanted data that is creating the problem.
Now try to use Time Machine and take a backup so you should not face any problem.
So, this is all as you learned about the different reasons that can lead to Time Machine backup failure error messages. The most important thing that you need to do whenever you face the problem is to check the format of the external drive. If it is incompatible, nothing will work. Therefore, make sure you use supported formats. In addition to this, if you keep your Mac optimized, you can not only solve the Time Machine problem but other problems too. For this, you can try using TuneUpMyMac, a must-have utility that performs various tasks in a single click.
Time Machine Backup Disk Not Available
Hope you find the information useful. Do share your thoughts in the comments section.