What external SSD do you recommend
 

Calling on the braintrust to advise what external SSD they have had good luck with. I've been looking on Amazon, and, of course, there are bad reviews for everything. I'm hoping to get some trustworthy real world reviews.

I've seen some WD drives on Amazon that were mostly good reviews, but then have a ton of recent bad reviews.

I was then looking at Samsung drives on Amazon. The fast one (T7) is reported by a ton of people to run very hot, even when it's plugged in but sitting idle, so some folks recommended the T5 which is the same but about half as fast, and that's got a whole slew of other complains.

I figured SSD will make the backups much faster, but now I'm wondering about going back to spinning platters. I don't have to have the speed, I guess.

This drive will mostly be used to back up 2 computers weekly. My NAS is too full, and no longer accepting backups. I'll either get a second NAS or upgrade my existing RAID NAS eventually, but not right now.

Thanks

Seems like Amazon ends up getting counterfeit products, so that might explain all the recent bad reviews. If I was in the market for any sort of computer memory devices, I would search out a computer store.

One thing that I read about SSD drives is that if they fail, it is difficult if not impossible to recover data whereas a disc hard drives has a good chance to be recovered- I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.

Maybe what I'll do is buy a couple of old fashioned external drives (for the same price as one SSD) and make redundant backups.

The Samsung T series are my go to.

Have a bunch of 5 and 7, no issues with them.

They are very lite which gave me the impression they might be delicate but my oldest is 5 years old now and they travel with me without issue.

If you want hefty rugged feeling this is my other go to.

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Professional-2TB-G-DRIVE-SDPS11A-002T-GBANB/dp/B0929B5DWQ/ref=sr_1_3?crid=20RU93EBVX2T4&keywords=g%2Bdrive%2 Bssd&qid=1646584391&sprefix=g%2Bdrive%2Bssd%2Caps% 2C108&sr=8-3&th=1

Your other option, build your own.

Grab a Samsung EVO NVMe and an external case.

That way you know what's really in it.

I have one of these for backups, works great.

https://www.glyphtech.com/product/studio-raid-external-hard-drive

How much data do you need to back up and will you be using laptop or PC that has an open pci slot?

That's good to know about your experience with the T-series. And yeah, I hadn't thought about making my own. I've done the same in the past when I had an old drive that I wanted to get data off of.

Yeah, I've got a NAS with 4 drives running RAID so that I've got 4TB of storage on the network.
1TB would probably be plenty. My computer has a 1TB drive and the wife's has got 256GB. Here's is probably only half full and will be a full backup. Mine is probably 750GB, but a lot of that is music, videos, photos that are backed up to the NAS, so those will be skipped. My backup will probably only be ~300GB.

No, these are both Mac's, an iMac and an old macbook air, so no expansion slots.

Can you clarify what you're doing? What is the purpose of the storage? Is it continuous backups or long term storage?

SSD have a write limit, not great for continuous storage. At work our ssd cards last about 2 years because we write and write more.

Spinny Disks are still cheaper by the gb. I have disks mirrored, machine still runs when a disk dies and I can put in a new one.

Data I care about goes to bluray and is stashed elsewhere.

I'm not seeing the charm of the proprietary enclosures. microsd cards are the same price/gb and much easier to store... Remember the cost of storage is not going up so buy what you need when you need it.

Thanks for this thread, Steve.....and I have a slight "hijack" question for anyone who cares to respond.

I have an Intel Nuc with a SSD and as was mentioned earlier, understand that recovery of data from a SSD in case of failure would be difficult.

I wondered about buying a second Nuc as a back up - that is it would have duplicate operating system, email client, programs, and data. So if my primary Nuc bites the dust the transition to a second PC would be fairly easy.

Is this an impractical idea?

Yes.

Better off with full backups to an external drive that includes restore points and keeping a fresh new in box drive on the shelf.

Swap it in and do a system restore and off you go.

If you are keeping nucs mirrored you are putting wear on both.

With SSDs it’s the finite read / write cycles you need to worry about.

I once asked my Father-in-law where he stored his back up drives.

"Just on top of the computer" he said.


What if your house burns down or gets broken into in a theft?


They're stored in the house gun safe now, just pull them out to back up then return to safe.

OK thanks, Scott!

I'll have to find the drive I need. Then make sure I have restore points in place.

You can see I'm behind on my diligence here.....

I have a Toshiba around 7T. It is pretty small, like palm size. And the bonus... it only cost around $60 on Amazon

Just a weekly backup. Not long term storage (that's what the RAID NAS that's backed up to an ext HDD is for).

This is what I did.

I just looked and for that money - all I see are 2TB's.

You sure yours is 7TB?

Thanks!

Great thread! I'm going to get a Samsung T7 today, have recently filled up my 1TB iMac drive and I need to offload a few hundred MB of pics.

You are right, sort of, anyway I was way off.

It is 4T and lists for $98 now. My order details show it was $84.99 when I bought it back in November. That's a pretty big jump.

And those are HDD, not SSD. SSD ~= $100/TB. You can easily get a decent 4TB HDD for $80-120. I would expect a 7TB drive to be closer to $150.

Honestly, I don't know the difference. This thing has saved me though. My laptop was getting very full very fast. I get a lot of police body cam videos in MP4 and dashcam in MPG formats. Those things take A LOT of space but haven't made a dent in the 4T. I don't know what I'd do with 7T

I have maybe 4 of them, primarily for the read and write speeds for photos. I tend to get whatever is on sale at Costco at the time. Sandisk 1TB was down to $99 at one point, same with the Samsung T7 directly from the Samsung website. I got the Crucial one when it was $124 at Amazon.

They all get hot quickly. But they are fast.

I still back up to a regular spinning drive, 5TB from Costco.

Not to hijack this thread, but what HDD enclosure do you guys recommend?

Back in 2020 I bought a Sabrent EC-DFLT model but while using it a couple weeks ago there was a hiccup either in the power or something else and it quit working. I'm not sure if I over heated it by keeping some extra drives on top of it while using it or what. If there's a 'better' one out there let me know, otherwise I'll just get another and right it off. It wasn't used that much at all which is why I'm hesitant to get another one.

crap only half that posted and delete post not working

on my phone

repost later

Any reco's welcome to my question above.
Thanks.

k so the sabrent is a dock and you say you had drives stacked on it so i assume you swap drives from time to time.

I would suggest one of these, swap in two drives at a time and you also have a drive cloner.

I have this brand. No issues with it to date.

https://www.amazon.com/WAVLINK-Dual-Bay-External-3-5-inch-Duplicator/dp/B07C9RSZFM/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?keywords=hard%2Bdrive%2Bduplicator &qid=1646662097&sr=8-2-spons&smid=A1ZAFAL1WND4H&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlm aWVyPUExUVE1RE05MDhSOUcxJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUExMDI3OT kxMlpaTDhPSjhFNzM0TCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNzI5NjI3 NEtVMVJISEQwN0czJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj 1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ&th=1

If you are looking for a good SSD external drive, there are several things to decide up front. The ONLY reason to use an external SSD is speed. So be certain the drive is USB 3.1 don't even bother with USB 2.0 and 3.0. If your computer is so old it does not have USB 3.1, then 3.0 is OK. It is pointless and just wasting money to have a SSD in a USB 2.0 enclosure. eSATA connections are even better if you have that.

What I use for external drives is a USB 3.1 bare drive adapter. Plug in the drive to the adapter, and plug into the computer and get to backing up. The most important thing is to remember to do the backup, and do it regularly. And use two different backup drives stored in a safe place.

For truly critical files, backup just the data to a thumb drive regularly. No need to do a full system backup constantly, just the data files. I have an APP on my phone called Air Disk Pro. It sets up a wireless connection to my computer. I set up the folders and I can back up the data files of the most important programs and entire folders of my business records. Every invoice and the information on insurance and the airplane and all those are backup up to my phone weekly.

And of course they are backed up regularly to my internal 5 drive RAID 5 spinning drive.

Thanks everyone. Lots of good info.

Exactly the type of thing I'm looking for. Thanks. Yes, I do swap some old drives just to access the old files on them.SmileWavy

BTW the ones I got at Costco claim up to 1050Mbps. Don't bother with the 550Mbps, that's only a tad faster than the spinning discs. The ones that claim 2Tbps, or those that utilize Thunderbolt speeds, are too expensive for me.

I’ve never had any brand go bad and it doesn’t matter because I back them all up to the cloud.

Well there was one, it that was because I used the wrong power cable and fried it. $75 mistake.