Best external backup storage

[American Psycho]

I know Modee recently posted about Time Capsule and that's great, but if you look at all the advice, particularly following the recent global malware attack, it is highly recommended that you have at least one OFFLINE backup of all your important data.

What's best? Flash drives, external HD, DVD?

Apple seems to push customers to those LaCie rugged hard drives, they are a little overpriced especially considering those Seagate HDs have a pretty bad failure rate.

[Modee]

If you're going to use the external drive to boot up your system, it must have its own power source, otherwise it will burn out the hardwire connection. I have LaCie drives they work fine for me. I also use encrypted flash drives for more sensitive documents I do not want to keep on my computer, and unencrypted ones for transport purposes.

For example lately I travel a lot, and I keep all Modeeworld tech support files on a flash drive and update them there as needed while away. Then when I am back home, I transfer these files back to my main desktop, and this way everything is kept at its most current updated state. OSX allows you to "merge" files so that only the ones that have been changed in a given folder (directory) are updated/re-saved.

[American Psycho]

I just meant as an offline backup for everything, perhaps to lock away somewhere and update once a week or so. Flash drive or external hard drive? Any recommendation?

I don't know why you'd want to consistently boot from an external drive, but I do have my movie and TV show collection on an external drive running into several TBs, I leave it plugged in for hours or even days at a time running movies and TV as I like, is that likely to burn out the hardwire connection?

[Modee]

My MAC computers have 3Tb drives so a flash is not an option for complete backup!

Any HD you leave hooked up constantly it is best to have its own power supply and not rely on power through the computer port, unless, I suppose, if it is a solid state drive, then power requirements would be minimal.

<<I just meant as an offline backup for everything, perhaps to lock away somewhere and update once a week or so. >>

You'd be surprised what a pain it is to back up or update manually on a regular basis. I'd just stick with Time Capsule, and if you have a LOT of data, attach an external self-powered HD to the Time Capsule with USB.

If you're really worried about losing everything, such as say in a catastrophe (fire, etc.), go with cloud storage.

If your wifi is secure no one will break into it.

[American Psycho]

What do you use to encrypt your flash drives now? TrueCrypt stopped updates a while ago, and I don't like the way Apple encrypts flash drives. There's quite a number of other options out there, which do you use?

[Modee]

I just use OSX (Apple) 128 or 256 encryption. Once you get used to it, it works fine. Seems to work better with some flash drives than with others. Lexar work fine.

[American Psycho]

Now I use two external Hard Drives for my backup and recovery. I use one 4 TB LaCie drive for daily use, and I have one Western Digital 4 TB drive with an exact copy of the data locked away in a fireproof safe.

They're both fully encrypted using VeraCrypt.

[Modee]

That works fine. Very good setup.

I just connect the external HD (with its own power supply of course, as noted above this is a must), to my 3Tb Apple Time Capsule. The external HD handles the backup on my MacBook Pro and one of the iMacs, and the Time Capsule handles the backup on other two iMacs, so four computers in all being backed up by two different drives. I also click for encryption. Be sure to also set FileVault to ON for all your Macs - no point in encrypting your backups if the computer drives themselves are not encrypted.

[American Psycho]

Which cloud storage provider do you use? You mentioned you have 3TB to backup. I have 4TB I need to backup. All the cloud providers I can find offer only up to 2TB.

[Modee]

I don't use cloud much other than for photos via iCloud. I have multiple backups so I don't need cloud. Also, unless you keep all of your backups completely up to date they aren't much use, and trying to keep both cloud and all physical backups synched is a bit of work.

[American Psycho]

I have multiple backups too, but cloud is a good insurance policy in case everything gets lost. You never know what if there's a fire, or you get burgled, or raided by the police.

[American Psycho]

I'm using DropBox for my cloud storage now. Their support is really good. I feel much better knowing that even if I were to lose all my possessions then I would still have my data. Just make sure you encrypt any sensitive data BEFORE you upload it to the cloud, I would NEVER trust any provider that claims to offer encrypted cloud storage as there's too many possibilities for backdoors.