Which size hard drive should I buy?
13/08/25 Filed in: Hardware | Buying advice
I'm debating between a 256 and a 512 gig hard drive for my next Mac. Which one should I buy?
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Always go with the larger size. But it really more depends on how much data you already have. As you saw on my website link earlier, that shows you things to consider. But overall, no way I’d buy a 256 gig hard drive these days. Apple shouldn’t even sell that spec. 512 gigs is barely enough for some people. But if this is a person’s first “college” computer then it’s usually fine.
I've written about how to consider space when buying a new computer here.
___________
Always go with the larger size. But it really more depends on how much data you already have. As you saw on my website link earlier, that shows you things to consider. But overall, no way I’d buy a 256 gig hard drive these days. Apple shouldn’t even sell that spec. 512 gigs is barely enough for some people. But if this is a person’s first “college” computer then it’s usually fine.
I've written about how to consider space when buying a new computer here.
Time Machine encryption warning
12/08/25 Filed in: time machine | encryption
Overnight install of new OS I received a notification that: “Time Machine is backing up an encrypted disk to an unencrypted disk.” I'm guessing the update included some kind of newer encryption?
___________
That Time Machine message is nothing to be concerned about. The reason you are seeing that is because of the two drives involved in your data ecosystem, one being the internal drive and the other being the backup drive, one of them is using encryption and the other is not. You then see a message saying what you described. A couple of things to do…
1. Turn off encryption on one or both drives.
2. Turn on encryption on one or both drives.
3. Leave it the way it is and ignore the message.
This is really only something to be concerned with if there was a theft of one or either of the drives. If I stole your backup drive for instance, and it weren’t encrypted, I could see all the data that’s on it once I brought it back to my lair.
It’s a pretty simple fix but if you’d like to just ignore it that's also totally fine. Either way.
___________
That Time Machine message is nothing to be concerned about. The reason you are seeing that is because of the two drives involved in your data ecosystem, one being the internal drive and the other being the backup drive, one of them is using encryption and the other is not. You then see a message saying what you described. A couple of things to do…
1. Turn off encryption on one or both drives.
2. Turn on encryption on one or both drives.
3. Leave it the way it is and ignore the message.
This is really only something to be concerned with if there was a theft of one or either of the drives. If I stole your backup drive for instance, and it weren’t encrypted, I could see all the data that’s on it once I brought it back to my lair.
It’s a pretty simple fix but if you’d like to just ignore it that's also totally fine. Either way.
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