external drives

George has a Seagate external hard drive for storing his photos. But when he opens it, he sees everything from photos to files. Leo says it's likely that his Mac is using Time Machine, and it's backing up everything. You have the option to disable the backing of system files and other data. So spend some time in the settings and decide what you want to backup. Once you tell Time Machine what drive you want for backup, then it'll backup regularly. Leo also recommends enabling iCloud.

Rich is an audiobook narrator, and he records huge files on his Mac Mini. Should he record to an external hard drive, rather than the internal drive? Leo says that is just silly.  The SSD has wear levelling that keeps it in a safe condition and the reliability isn't an issue. They also have error correction built in. So it will be just as fine to record to the internal drive than an external drive. Thunderbolt 3 is also just as fast as the internal drive, so either one will work. And professional grade professional software will ensure no errors happen.

Nam is debating whether to get a Chromebook or a laptop. Leo says that you can pretty much do anything on a Chromebook that he could do on a laptop, within reason. There are some higher-end professional uses, like video editing and gaming, that are better on a Windows computer. But most other activities can be done in ChromeOS through a browser.

David has a Dell XPS 11 and he keeps getting an error message when he plugs in his external drive. Leo says that there's a little piece of software from the external drive that is essentially an ad for Western Digital. He doesn't need it. Leo advises rebooting, then plugging the drive back in. Windows will then reinstall the driver and it should work.