External SSD Back-up
 

Hi Folks

Tying again to ask for your expertise and advice.

It's about time that I back-up everything on my PC to an external drive. Knowing little about it, it seems that a SSD device with no moving parts is probably best. I am happy to tell my PC every week or so to carry out this back-up, so nothing too hard would help!

Could you please advise which SSD's you would recommend for efficiency and reliability. Oh, I think 1TB should be sufficient, and I am running on Windows 10. My son recommends Scandisk, so your thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

He probably meant SanDisk. I'd go for Samsung but I couldn't say if one is better than the other. You can be lucky or unlucky with any brand if you're only buying one.

If your data's really valuable then general policy is to have a least 2 backups and alternate them. So backup to Disk1 one week, to Disk2 the next and then Disk1 again on the third. That way if something bad happens during the backup process you don't end up copying garbage all over your only backup.

Are you wanting to back up your personal data(photos, emails, documents etc) so you could restore them to another machine or do you want to be able to rebuild the whole machine, apps and all, ie make a disk-image? That makes a difference as to how you tell your machine to do the backup.

It's also worth considering backing up to the 'cloud'. If only so you're ready to tell people who ask, why you wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

Hi netstruggler

Thanks for your comments, and yes, I should have written SanDisk - my mistake!

The idea is just to save personal stuff such as 'photos, word documents, and emails. If I have these available, hopefully I could transfer the data to another machine. Good idea, by the way, to run 2 back-ups in alternate.

Thanks again.

and keep them in different places..............................

I've had a Seagate 1TB running for a couple of years or more with no issues

I’d also suggest that the alternating backups go to different types of media , eg SSD and spinning platters. Also once a year or so, take a third backup and store it in a different location.

Thanks, reynoldsno1 and judyjudy for your thoughts; much appreciated.

Looks like a couple of Samsung SSD's may well be the answer.

Thanks again for all the inputs and ideas!

I've been making a collection of redundant hard/SS Drives to re-format and sell on. But seeing how much prices have fallen it seems hardly worthwhile.
Shall certainly use one or two for belt-and-braces additional backups.
Amazing prices.

" the alternating backups go to different types of media"

Can I ask why? Do you think that every SSD (for example) is suddenly going to fail?

It's possible that, if you bought two identical SSDs at the same time, you'd hit wear life on both of them at the same time.

Been caught out like that with large spinning rust RAID5 arrays; if you buy 30 discs at the same time the tolerances are such that when they start to fail the second one to fail is within the rebuild time from when the first one went.

In the OP's case I'd just sign up with Backblaze and not worry about it.



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thanks - Not something I'd thought of! But then I'm a cheap-skate and only buy one at a time..................

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.

I take it that you have never seen iron oxide flaking off the surface of a hard disk? I was going to suggest optical backup, but then I came across this:With respect to hard disks:​​​​​​​YMMV
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The nice people over at the aforementioned Backblaze have some data on SSD and spinning rust drives. The jury is still out on which is more reliable for their use case, but the failure rates overlap. Their operating regime is different to a home user's.

It seems that, in practice, wear life isn't what kills a modern SSD.

Their numbers though (average drive life of under 3 years) means you'd be expecting something like £60/year for a two drive backup, and there is a choice of backup providers at that price point.

Just a thought, Isn't backing up to the cloud just storing your data on someone else's computer?

What if that fails, or the company goes bust.

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This is an oft used argument.. Yes it's someone else's computer. But that computer is built to a higher quality than your home computer. And it's kept in nice solid racks in a data centre with air conditioning, clean power, backup generator and security guards on the door. Your data is actually distributed across lots of computers in different data centres, maybe even in different countries, so all that nice physical stuff isn't really necessary. And it's looked after by professionals with proper monitoring and fault prediction. And in some cases a $2bn R&D budget to make it better (or fiddle tax, depending on your cynicism) so you get continuous backup, point in time recovery etc.

All.of that is pretty pointless really because what really matters is....

...that most of the cloud providers will offer you 99.999999999% durability. If I've done the sums right a single file loss is 200 times less likely than a double engine failure on an ETOPS certified flight (I've assumed engine failures are independent events, which they obviously aren't in the real world). A homebrew solution is nowhere near that; you probably won't even remember to do the backup in the first place!

If the company goes bust or raises prices you just go elsewhere, or revert to DIY.

I've no idea if cloud is right for the OP but it is almost certainly more reliable than a pair of external hard drives.

The only truly long-lasting backup process is a roomful of monks chiseling away on stone tablets. Unfortunately the bandwidth is rather limited.

old but still correct

I have IBM punch cards that still have the holes in them that I can read that are over 70 years old. If I could figure out how to do it the images on my website would only take 13,750,000 cards. :)

When you do, make sure you turn on the numbering option in the last four columns. It really helps if they get out of sequence. :)

I once dropped a large, un-numbered deck of cards. Never did that again!


PS Back on topic.

Another vote for Backblaze. The beauty of this system is that it runs automatically in the background, so backups are always up to date, unlike my local disk backups, which I typically run weekly.

Another feature of Backblaze is that I can access my files via the web, using any computer.

I run GRsync on my (Linux) machine which has about 700GB of data backed up to a USB hard drive. Initial back up to a long time, but subsequent backups which only deal with changes are quick and efficient.

I realize this package is not much use to most PPRuner's but I wanted to highlight one of the best points. The data on the USB hard drive is neither compressed nor encrypted and can be accessed by mounting the drive on any Linux or Windows computer without any issues.

What filesystem does it use? NTFS?

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.

Hi giggitygiggity

Great bit of information, thanks.

I bought as Samsung T7 last week, and seems fine. Need to sort a way of finding changes when I connect SSD, as I do not want duplicates, or sit in front of the screen for ages accepting or denying what has been found.

Cheers !

Plenty of people recommending rsync

If you're on Windows then I'd suggest robocopy, rsync can be temperamental on Windows. If you're uncomfortable with a command line there are various GUIs.

Excellent purchase... as far as the physical media's worth, Samsung is a great hardware manufacturer and I'm sure you won't be let down - but Label those Cables!

Good luck with the backup plan and reply or inbox me if I can be of any further help!

Yes, very helpful info, thanks.

Just now Amazon are offering the SanDisk Extreme 1Tb for £149 but the 2Tb for (before discount) £130. Any particular reason for this counter-intuitive lower price? (with discount the 2Tb is even cheaper at £109)

Not sure, it's just Amazon doing their own thing. Get the larger one for less! I managed to nab a 4tb Crucial x9 Pro for £179 during their Black Friday promotion.

This site can help give you an idea of whether you're really getting a bargain as it tracks Amazon price changes. £109 seems like a decent price very near the all time lowest of £104 during Black Friday.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....2435224ff7.png

https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/produ...context=search

I use Goodsync for that, runs on Macs and Windows PCs, nice clear interface.

Be careful with WD/Sandisk Extreme SSDs
 

I would suggest a bit of caution before committing Sandisk Extreme SSDs to use as backups: I read that there's a couple of class-action lawsuits pending in the US concerning failures of these devices and according to one source, the problems are not to do with the firmware (and are hence not solved by the firmware updates that WD/Sandisk have issued) but are hardware-related. WD have apparently bought out Sandisk. Have a look at:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/comput...avoc-revealed/
PBW

That's interesting. I've only ever used their USB sticks but had previously read good things about their large external SSDs. Reccommendation adjusted!

Completely wrong - your SSD will die in 3-4 years so thats not 'virtually unlimited'. Laptops have lasted 10 years without issue before adn now its a lot less than half. SSD's are generrally 'on-board' chips so a hardware swap out is impossible. My experience of an office full of SSD laptops says they die quickly, and very often - to the point that field techs only get HDD laptops.

Disagree - anyone who uses a laptop with SSD daily will see short life. SSD's dont just lose portions and then ignore the dead parts and use the rest. They just fail, lose a big chiunk of the OS (which is the bit that is R/W most often) and go 100% dead.

Incorrect - you get large dead patches in the chip and you lose files and if its the OS then you lose the entire contents. SAt least with an HDD, it has a distinct are for the FAT/NTFS/APFS table, but on an SSD , the most important part 9which says where all your files are) is as unreliable as the rest.

Never ever ever use an SSD as a backup.

Since 2011, I have had two 1tb WD hard drives in an Icy Box 2 bay External RAID Storage Enclosure. This I run in RAID 1 mode, so the two drive are mirrored, ie I cat two copies one on each drive. This has worked well for me and I only run it when I want to back up some photos, so not a lot of use over the last 13 years.

I have, including some duplicates 139,855 photos backed up from my PC. So in effect I have 3 copies of the photos on each of the three drives. I believe in the aviation world this is referred to as triple redundancy :) :) :).

As the system is getting a bit old and running out of space, (13 years ago my files were in the order of 1.5mb each, now they now range from 10 to 18mb :eek:) I have bought some new kit to do the same thing...

A more modern Icy Box External 2 Bay RAID System and two Seagate IronWolf, 4TB, NAS, Internal Hard Drives to go in it. Hopefully that will do for the next 13 years.

Bought the bits on Amazon Black Friday, but I have Not set it up yet.

Sadly that setup is not particularly fault tolerant. A ransomware attack will take out your primary copy and both backups, if the backup is turned on. A controller failure in the housing will take out both backups. An external force (e.g. fire) will also take out the primary and both backups. A mechanical life issue (bearing failure) will take both backups at roughly the same time.

Perhaps most likely a fat fingered user will also take out both backups in one go, or if a delete goes unnoticed everything.

See also https://www.raidisnotabackup.com/

Raid box only connected and switched on when required (not often = low run time) I have used mine for 13 years now, with no replacement parts.

IF a controller failure took out both backups, I still have the primary.

Primary & backup stored in different locations in home, hopefully one will survive

If I lose one backup, the RAID system allows a rebuild from the surviving drive

Just saw this on YT.