Originally Posted by
GrahamO
SSD's have an actual limited lifetime, based upon the number of times the SSD is written to. Its obviously varies by usage amounts but it if fixed and there is no recovery from it.
I would never have a backup with such an obvious flaw/limitation if my data was important to me.
The limit is why so many high end lightweight laptops die, and cannot be repaired, nor data recovered. Any Macbook Pro laptops after build A1708 are on board SSD chips so replacement of an SSD is basically impossible - it means a new motherboard, so nearly the price of a new laptop. Pretty much any othermanufacturer has the exact same problem.
SSD's lifespan is virtually unlimited for 99% of consumer use cases. Only those with some very unique use cases will ever hit the limit. Despite that, it's a write limit anyway so technically your data isn't at risk (so not an issue for a backup) and all decent drives come with something called overprovisioning to ringfence extra capacity to mostly solve this problem temporarily whilst you upgrade/move your data elsewhere.
Don't buy anything other than an SSD. The brands you should buy are
Samsung or Crucial. There are plenty of other reputable manufactuers out there, but these are the best and sell at prices competitive with the dross. Decide how much you need to backup and double it. Models I'd suggest are the
Crucial X6/X8/X9, or the
Samsung T7 or T9. I'd get any one of those, pick whatever Amazon has on offer. Cases for them are a gimmick, they're mostly indestructable unless you're really trying.
General rules for an external drive method:
Not all USB cables are the same, stick with the ones that come in the box to avoid compatibility issues.
Only have the device phyiscally attached when you want to backup. That avoids ransomware attacks killing your data as well as the backup.
Format it in ExFAT if you know how (although this is probably the factory default for modern drives), this saves any compatibility issues if you decide to move to a Mac computer or anything else down the line. Can also then plug it into a modern iPhone, iPad or Android device if you wish.
The choice of backup software and what you're trying to achieve is the tricky bit. The best solutions give you something called
snapshots (same as HowardB's GRsync), where they allow you to go back in time and look at your backup on a given date. Each time your data changes, it records the differences allowing you to pick and choose when you want to see it. You can do this for free and safely with software like
Duplicati, or there are many other paid solutions that schedule daily/weekly/monthly backups. The other option is to just do it DIY and copy your important folders in Windows at a regular interval. This is by far the simplest option, but is easily prone to errors.
There are better solutions (small computers called Network Attached Storage) but the price starts to climb pretty rapidly, they're not necessary for small backup jobs and if you keep them in your own house, doesn't solve the break-in/fire/water damage cases. If doing it DIY is too complicated (that's what your son is for!), then like others mentioned,
Backblaze will do the job neatly.