Passport For Mac Backup Plus

Sep 1, 2017 - Seagate's Backup Plus or Western Digital's My Passport are pretty reliable. Time Machine will more or less handle the rest, backing up.

Perfect backup solution when a cable connection will do. Solid-state simplicity and durability and well crafted - right out of the box - for those tech-challenged or just tech tired. I plugged the (included) USB cable into the drive, then its other end into a Mac Book Pro (model 10,1), up popped a dialog box asking if I wanted to use Time Machine (Apple's proprietary back-up program), checked 'yes' the software started a countdown to start the backup, then began following the countdown. I had 267.21 GB to backup and that took about two hours.

Thereafter it is virtually invisible, backing up on schedule those changes from the original. Dead simple, completely quiet, 1-Terrabyte is the size of a (thin) deck of cards. A very discreet white LED glows when the drive is working. It uses USB power so there are NO other cords or batteries to provide.

UPDATE-2: After Christopher K.' S feedback I conducted further tests to isolate that 'cyclical head activity' situation. I first unplugged CAT6 cable to my NAS (Synology DiskStation DS213air). Wi-fi is already disabled. So NAS become absolutely stand-alone, away from all external interaction. When you unplug the ethernet cable, it goes thru a busy few minutes with disk activitiy. Then after it 'calmed down', I noticed that such semi-cyclical head activity is still going on.

At that point the only possible intervention to drives can obviously be coming from NAS operating system (DSM 6.1.3-15152 Update 3) and/or these 3 'packages' running on that NAS OS: -Universal Search (can't disable) -File Station (can't disable) -Media Server (can uninstall) So in theory either NAS OS or one of these packages can be 'polling' the drives cyclically. Otherwise, such cyclical activity must be coming from drive itself. I checked a bit more online for that ST8000AS0002 drive. I purchased Five WD 4TB Passport drives to back up a WD MyCloudPR4100 24TB (w/ Raid 5) NAS. Unfortunately, the 4TB Passports seem to have a write rate problem. I use a Robocopy batch file with 8 threads running on a windows 10 pro (i5 with 16GB RAM) desktop to back up the MyCloud.

I am using a USB3 interface. Ad blocker app for chrome macbook pro. Backup starts just fine and for the first 2TB, write rates are 80-100 MB/s with an average response time of ~1500 ms. After that, write rates fall precipitously and ultimately drop to 2-3 MB/s with an average response time of 4500-5500 ms by the time the drive has 2.5 TB transferred.

After that, the write rate seems to be stuck at a low rate. Disk shows mostly 100% active time. Things I have tried: 1. Quick format the drive: Write rate remains stuck at 2-3 MB/s 2.

Works like a charm with no drama. It's my archived data storage M-14 now (except the magazine does not drop out when you least expect it). Whatever you do, never ever forget to format your new external hard drive or USB stick prior to loading data onto it unless you want to spend three days finding out how to use freeware data retrieval programmes. Sounds obvious but it is easy to forget to do so.

You only forget to do so when you load essential data onto it then your computer tells you that it cannot read the external drive. I have owned this drive for 1 week. I am impressed with how cool it runs; it does not get hot like my older 2010 model external hdds. I am also impressed with how lightweight it is, and I also like the shape of it and that it is pretty small. It's also nice that it is plug and play and does not require a separate power source. I glanced at the NTI backup software and the PogoPlay cloud data access software but did not use it yet since Windows backup handles my backup needs and plugging the drive into the usb port on my router handles my cloud data access needs. To note, the user interface of the NTI backup software is nice looking and easy to use.

When I used the drive to take a system image of my mom's new laptop. Purchased this external hard drive to expand storage capabilities on an Xbox One. Plugged the drive in to one of the three Xbox USB 3.0 ports, followed the prompt to format the drive to store game data, and was ready to go. It was easy to move existing game data from the internal drive to the external drive. Note: You will need space on your power strip or electrical outlet to plug in the power adapter. If you are using this drive with the Xbox One and use a lot of accessories that also need USB ports, you may want to buy a 4-port USB hub. I wasn't thinking about that when I bought this and had to pick one up later.