Since ‘day one’ (2007), I have used Apple’s Time Machine. In the 17 years since, I have had a handful of occasions where I have done full restores with it, more so in the days of spinning drives. Nonetheless, it’s a habit.
I used Apple’s Time Capsules for years, first the ’squat’ one, then the tower one. I retired this machine two years ago after moving to Netgear Orbi for mesh networking. I then switched to a Synology Disk Station DS-220J, but this was “a bag of hurt” with Time Machine. It kept dropping out and requiring reconnection. I gave up and resold it (at a loss).
But I still wanted some form of Time Machine with my Mac Mini. So, in the most recent Amazon sale, Samsung 2TB SSDs were on sale. I grabbed one for Time Machine, and it works perfectly.
I also have two old Samsung 500GB T5, which I run as Carbon Copy Cloner backups at 2 a.m. each day. One drive is used for a month, then goes off-site and is swapped out a month later on rotation. Again, this works perfectly.
So, where do you put these small drives? I velcroed them to the back of my monitor, which works just fine. And rather than take up USB-C ports on the Mac, I grabbed a Satechi four-port USB-C hub that moves data (only) at 5 Gbps, which is fine for backups.
My set-up is out of sight, works as wanted, and provides me peace of mind.
ENDS