1 TB portable USB SSD

[Av Gorritt]

Where is the best source for 2 of these for PC back up purposes . Toshiba - Samsung or what ?? They seem to vary between £40 ish to £300 ish (or more) Why is there such a difference , and are the dearer ones so much better ?

 

[Still Farming]

Don't think any like strong magnets???

 

[Av Gorritt]

????

 

[Storeman]

Have a look at Western Digital.
Been using their drives for many, many years.

 

[TechWise]

The difference in price could be to do with the read/write speed, whether it's USB2.0 or 3.0, whether it's in a sturdy aluminium case or a cheap plastic one etc. Or it could just be a classic case of paying for a name.

The going rate for most 1TB SSDs on Amazon seems to be around the £150 to £200 mark. I'm a bit skeptical of the £40 you've mentioned - are you sure that's not an HDD?

Don't think you'd go far wrong with this one based on the reviews anyway:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Extreme-Portable-SSD-Read/dp/B078STRHBX/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=1Tb+external+ssd&qid=1597944045&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyUk5DRVc0UjJNMjE4JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNzI0NjI3MjJPRFVXTE1ZMDNYTiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUExMDQ1NDgxTVBDMkVMM1FRNk5JJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

 

[J B]

Why SSD "for back up purposes"?
An HDD would do for that and me loads cheaper.

 

[Still Farming]

All cloud based these days they keep telling me?

 

[TrickyT]

just remember about backups. It depends on how important the data is?

There is no point having it on your PC and backed up to a portable device if both are in the same place. A theft or fire and they are both gone.

Online storage is good, but unless you are paying for 100% uptime (very rare) then you could lose everything in the (very unlikely) event of online failure and PC failure at the same time.

Trevor

 

[Storeman]

For backups, there is the 3,2,1 rule...
3 copies, on 2 different media types, stored in more than 1 location.
May seem a bit overkill, I guess it depends on how much you value your data, whatever it may be.

 

[deleted user 837354]

There is no way you are gonna lose anything in a cloud service.

If you have precious photos or something burn them to a DVD and put them in a safe place.

There is no point in having a solid state backup drive connected by USB as the USB interface hasn't got a hope in hell of passing data to a SSD fast enough for the drive to make any noticeable difference to read or write speeds. Buy a mechanical HDD designed for backups.

 

[Chris F]

If you are going to back up at home then you will want a dual bay NAS drive:

Synology DS218play 2-Bay 6TB NAS w/ 2x3TB IronWolf

www.broadbandbuyer.com

Raid 10 configured (it does all this for you).

Otherwise if you lose a hard drive, you can lose everything.

 

[shumungus]

If you are going to back up at home then you will want a dual bay NAS drive:

Synology DS218play 2-Bay 6TB NAS w/ 2x3TB IronWolf

www.broadbandbuyer.com

Raid 10 configured (it does all this for you).

Otherwise if you lose a hard drive, you can lose everything.

Chris would you mind explaining (in lay mans terms) how you would set this up and how it would be beneficial in a small home network?

 

[Chris F]

Chris would you mind explaining (in lay mans terms) how you would set this up and how it would be beneficial in a small home network?

It acts as a single drive on your network - so will appear as a letter (mine is Z and you can copy things to it and have folders on it, just like any other drive. But it has 2 hard discs in the device (mine actually has 4 and you can get them with more). When you set the device up (they is a wizard that guides you through the process) you select the level of protection you want. I use Raid 10, which means information is kept on both hard discs at the same time. Therefore if one drive fails (has happened to me twice in 7 years), you simply pull that drive out the front and put a new one in. It then spends a few hours rebuilding the content.

The drive plugs into your router via a cat5 cable and has its own power cable. I suppose its like a computer without a screen and just there for storage. Really is a simple setup.

This is the model I have:

WD WDBWZE0160KBK My Cloud EX4100 4-Bay 16TB NAS w/ 4x4TB WD Red (2GB RAM)

www.broadbandbuyer.com

Benefits - you can keep everything on these drives, so nothing needs to be kept on a computer. Makes it harder to lose data. Although in theory someone could steal the whole drive. I put mine in the safe when I go away,

 

[Cowabunga]

There is no way you are gonna lose anything in a cloud service.

If you have precious photos or something burn them to a DVD and put them in a safe place.

There is no point in having a solid state backup drive connected by USB as the USB interface hasn't got a hope in hell of passing data to a SSD fast enough for the drive to make any noticeable difference to read or write speeds. Buy a mechanical HDD designed for backups.

I beg to differ. Canon Cloud Services has just lost thousands of people's archived files due to someone's coding error. This is fresh news in these last ten days. No way of getting them back whatsoever as they have been permanently deleted.

DVD's are so last decade! They are not reliable and do not provide reliable long term storage. They can degrade with time.

There are several types of USB and if the common ASB A type is used it will not transfer faster than a standard mechanical hard drive can handle, however USB 3.0 or 3.1 with the blue tab certainly can and USB C even faster and some USB C may now even be Thunderbolt ports [they look the same] which can transfer at speeds that can make good use of an SSD's speed.

 

[Av Gorritt]

Why SSD "for back up purposes"?
An HDD would do for that and me loads cheaper.

I think you're probably right about SSD/ HDD, , I'll look further into it . Thanks all for the input (as usual , very helpful )
Excuse the ignorance but the drive I was on about was indeed HDD and NOT SSD , and yes , certainly OK for what I need. (speed and capacity )

 

[deleted user 837354]

Good luck trying to get data delivered to a solid state drive with any intention of saturating it to the point the drive is the physical limitation.

DVDs degrading- if they are correctly stored and not abused the manufacturers state that they should have a reasonable 20-30 year lifespan, obviously pressed versions will outlive these easily. In any event they will be far safer than any solid state drive, I bet a mechanical disk drive has a similar life expectancy all things considered.

If you want a mechanical hard drive designed for backups, Western digital do exactly this product, but you would need to check you buy the right kind of drive. Drives designed for backups (might be WD red?) are programmed differently to regular consumer drives in that they spend a lot of their time absolutely asleep and not moving/rotating the platters at all.

 

[Cowabunga]

Where is the best source for 2 of these for PC back up purposes . Toshiba - Samsung or what ?? They seem to vary between £40 ish to £300 ish (or more) Why is there such a difference , and are the dearer ones so much better ?

Best most reliable, quickest source? Amazon.

While you don't really need an SSD drive for back-ups, because they are done in the background and can take their time, if you are buying with a long term view and might use it for main storage where fast back and forth transfers will be needed, a couple of SSD's are a good idea. They do need fast USB to work to their potential of course, not standard USB A, although if you get ones with USB3 it will work just fine only at USB A speed if that is all your computer port has.

SATA interface SSD are not as fast as newer ones but as fast as all but Thunderbolt ports can handle and they are cheaper than NVMe M.2 drives.
Go for much bigger SSD drives than you expect to need because performance deteriorates above 80% capacity. 500GB is about the sweet spot for price/capacity currently I think. SSD's above 1TB capacity tend to get very expensive for what you get, although there is now a new type that will do you fine for a reasonable price at 1TB.

ITB mechanical hard drive, WD MyPassport £42+VAT each

Faster USB 3.1gen2 500GB SSD hardrive £67+VAT

What I would buy today I think would be this

Crucial P1 1 TB CT1000P1SSD8 Internal Solid State Drive-up to 2000 MB/s (3D NAND, NVMe, PCIe, M.2), Black: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Buy

www.amazon.co.uk

Plus this tool-free enclosure for it. All plug and play...

Plugable USB C to M.2 NVMe Tool-free Enclosure USB C and Thunderbolt 3 Compatible up to USB 3.1 Gen 2 Speeds (10Gbps). Adapter Includes USB-C and USB 3.0 Cables (Supports M.2 NVMe SSDs 2280 2260 2242): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Buy

www.amazon.co.uk

These are M.2 drives and enclosures. SATA is a slower interface so I'd stick with M.2 NVMe drives but whether you want the very affordable 3D NAND type or the more durable and faster [for very large files] more expensive type is up to you. Unless you are a power user, the above should be very much more than adequate.

If more than 1TB storage on each drive is required, go for a conventional hard drive rather than SSD, even though it will be leagues slower. Indeed if only for backups, what I use are conventional hard drives. All my Photos are on conventional external USB drives like WD MyPassport and backed up to another similar drive and there is no speed issue. Where transfer speed is essential is when using external drives for things like Photoshop or 4K video editing, 3D graphics, that kind of thing

 

[Cowabunga]

Good luck trying to get data delivered to a solid state drive with any intention of saturating it to the point the drive is the physical limitation.

DVDs degrading- if they are correctly stored and not abused the manufacturers state that they should have a reasonable 20-30 year lifespan, obviously pressed versions will outlive these easily. In any event they will be far safer than any solid state drive, I bet a mechanical disk drive has a similar life expectancy all things considered.

If you want a mechanical hard drive designed for backups, Western digital do exactly this product, but you would need to check you buy the right kind of drive. Drives designed for backups (might be WD red?) are programmed differently to regular consumer drives in that they spend a lot of their time absolutely asleep and not moving/rotating the platters at all.

All my external mechanical drives sleep when not accessed.
WD red are meant for NAS storage, as described in post 14 above, which is for a centralised access data storage solution for a network. There has been some controversy lately because WD changed the type of media used inside their red drives without informing customers, which resulted in much increased access times if my memory serves me. I think they have now resolved the issue, if only by more clearly labelling their drives, but this is from memory and may be subject to inaccuracy because I only read it in passing a couple of months ago.

Backups are usually regularly done and really need to be as automated as possible and the media overwritten when full. What is not needed is masses of DVD's around the place, which need manual loading. Besides which optical drives are being discontinued very quickly on new machines. I've not used one in probably six years except for trying to access photo files of my daughter stored on series of disks about 20 years ago. They are inaccessible and have been tried in several computers. They did work at some point years ago. Luckily I still have the video cassettes that they weren originally written to, except that I no longer own a video tape player. Optical drives are similarly on the way out. The beauty of hard drives using USB is that they will still be current in many many year's time, even if it means using a USB C or whatever is then current, adapter.

 

[Av Gorritt]

2 off 1TB HDD Usb3 compatible, seem to fit the bill for me . Done it anyway , we'll see how it all transpires . Thanks all , for very knowledgeable contributions (as usual !)