Twelve South BackPack

I recently acquired a Western Digital 6TB external drive for Time Machine backups as well as a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD[1] for my home iMac. While I normally don’t care about naming drives I decided it would be great to have a punny name for the SSD which was to be used for Premiere and Resolve caches and renders. Naturally, I reached out to Twitter:

Jay Bond (@jbcashmoney) came in with the winner:

So far the drives have been working out great permanently connected to my 27" iMac but were taking up too much space on my desk when next to other drives I usually have for client projects. I’ve always loved products by Twelve South and decided to give their BackPack for iMac a try.

The packaging was simple, solid, and easy to open. It seems like a small thing but it instills a lot more confidence in the product you’re about to try out if it feels like thought was given to the packaging. Since the BackPack is designed to work on any iMac or Thunderbolt/Cinema Display[2] it comes with four different inserts depending on which model and where on the stand you’re attempting to attach the BackPack. My iMac sits at the back of the desk against the wall so I went for the higher rear position which sticks out less due to the slope of the iMac stand.

After sliding the inserts into the clips and screwing the clips into the main plate it was simply a matter of slotting the BackPack around the iMac stand and tightening the thumb screws. When attaching to the back of an iMac or Display the screws are underneath the platform and a bit hard to reach and apply enough force to properly tighten.

The thumb screws tucked in the corner are what tighten to hold the BackPack in place.

The thumb screws tucked in the corner are what tighten to hold the BackPack in place.

I put a little weight on the platform to test it and it sunk just a hair and then seemed sturdy enough. The BackPack is rated for 3.5 lbs which was enough to hold the 6TB My Book (2.3 lbs) and the 850 EVO (0.15 lbs). Included with the BackPack are four pegs which can be screwed on anywhere on the platform to help hold whatever you may put there. TwelveSouth suggests they are great for MacBook or MacBook Air but I used them just to keep my two drives upright and separate.

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So far it's only been two days, but I am very impressed with the BackPack. I've got a cleaner desk and two new drives out of sight but always on and connected. While I attached mine to the back, the TwelveSouth gallery shows other ways to attach the BackPack depending on what you'd like it to.

[Note: While I purchased the BackPack for iMac myself and am freely reviewing it, any links to Amazon are affiliate links. Thanks for the support.]

  1. I bought a StarTech USB 3.0 to 2.5" SATA III Hard Drive Adapter Cable to connect the SSD to my iMac. Works great!  ↩

  2. Except of course the iMac with Built-in VESA Mount Adapter  ↩