4 Things to Know About Picking an SSD for Time Machine

A Samsung T7 or Crucial X9 is all you need Any reputable USB 3.2 Gen 2 or Thunderbolt 3 SSD works fine for Time Machine on a MacBook Air with USB-C. The Samsung T7 is fast, tiny, silent, and runs cool. The Crucial X9 is a cheaper alternative that is almost as good.

Hardware encryption is optional The Samsung T7 has built-in hardware encryption if you want it. If you do not care about encryption, the Crucial X9 is slower but costs about half per gigabyte.

Do not pay extra for Thunderbolt 3 USB 3.2 Gen 2 is already faster than Time Machine can write. Only spend more on Thunderbolt 3 if you move huge files daily.

Get at least 1TB and skip HDDs 512GB fills up fast with everyday backups. Avoid spinning hard drives — they are painfully slow for Time Machine and fail more often. An SSD makes a restore take 20 minutes instead of two hours.