- Location
- New Zealand
I recently read an article that these are superior to portable hard drives. I currently back up to exterior hard disc drives ...
Just wanting opinions please.
Thanks
Just wanting opinions please.
Thanks
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Portable SSD drives
- Thread starter Rose McGillicuddy
- Start date
- Location
- Switzerland
- Name
- Matt
They're fast, small, light and of course don't have any moving parts; I use a couple of NVMe based ones for work and travel backup and general file handling, very handy.
I think the transition to SSDs has firmly happened - with even major internet and cloud services providers using them as their main means of physical storage.
That said, my personal physical backup at home is still HDD based - but I think it's the last round (pun intended). Next generation will be SSD.
M.
I think the transition to SSDs has firmly happened - with even major internet and cloud services providers using them as their main means of physical storage.
That said, my personal physical backup at home is still HDD based - but I think it's the last round (pun intended). Next generation will be SSD.
M.
Irene McC
Legend
- Location
- CPT, South Africa
My PC's C:/ drive is SSD and I have a very small expensive portable one too
Fast ! and safer, I hope
Fast ! and safer, I hope
- Location
- Boston Burbs
- Name
- David
SSDs are good for a lot of stuff. I've used them as my operating system drives for 10+ years. Then to NVMes for this about 4 years ago. I moved to SSDs for "current" work space for about 3-4 years ago and now have 2 NVMe drives in my laptop, 512GB + 2TB.
But RAW storage and backups? I have a 500gb spinning portable and about 35TBs in off line backups and a NAS (1x10TB + 2x8TB in RAID 5*). Why? Simple 8-10TB spinning enterprise drives can be found for under $200, 8TB SSDs are $700 for consumer and enterprise?
*Yes I know 2TB is wasted but got a deal on the 8TB drives and already had the 10TB drive.
But RAW storage and backups? I have a 500gb spinning portable and about 35TBs in off line backups and a NAS (1x10TB + 2x8TB in RAID 5*). Why? Simple 8-10TB spinning enterprise drives can be found for under $200, 8TB SSDs are $700 for consumer and enterprise?
*Yes I know 2TB is wasted but got a deal on the 8TB drives and already had the 10TB drive.
Drdul
Regular
- Location
- Vancouver, BC
- Name
- Richard
I use HDDs for backups. They cost far less than SSDs, and there’s no advantage to using a SSD to store files that are just sitting there. HDDs are reliable for long-term storage so long as they’re used every few months to write data, and they come in 20+ TB sizes (Seagate recently announced that they plan to get to 50 TB in a few years). SSDs are great for production volumes with frequent file read and writes, but at this time they don’t make sense for backups.
- Location
- New Zealand
Thanks everyone for the information. Much appreciated. For now I'll continue with my exterior HDD, but will keep monitoring prices and information.
Edit: because the SSD in my laptop is quite small, and almost full, I actually use the exterior drive for my photos, another reason I am looking at the exterior SSDs.
Edit: because the SSD in my laptop is quite small, and almost full, I actually use the exterior drive for my photos, another reason I am looking at the exterior SSDs.
- Location
- Switzerland
- Name
- Matt
Rose, it *is* possible (and not even a big deal) to swap out the SSD/HDD on a Windows computer for a bigger one - any technician worth his/her name should be able to do it at a reasonable price. A full main drive can cause issues that aren't trivial to live with, so ... maybe consider it? I don't know if you're on Windows, though.
M.
- Location
- Beaumaris, Melbourne, Australia
- Name
- John ...
Rose, IMNSHO, all SSDs should be backed up onto a HDD, or three.
Data on a HDD formatted with NTFS is almost always recoverable, and fails gracefully over time, often a year or more. An SSD almost always fails catastrophically, in about a microsecond ...
- Location
- New Zealand
Thanks John. Obviously the article, or snippet I read, had some vested interest by the writer. Maybe a financial incentive to advertise the product .....
