Solved Are Portable SSD's Good for Backup Purposes? How long will they last? And what about 'bit-rot'?

BuddhaNature · May 17, 2025

I had two small portable HHDs which I had used for the last 11 years solely for backup purposes. One of them gave a file corruption error a little while ago so I decided I had got my money's worth out of them time to ditch them and get something else.

In the end I got two of these: Samsung T7 Portable SSD - 2 TB - USB 3.2 Gen.2 External SSD

I've started using them, they work fine, and are considerably quicker than backing up to my old spinning disk drives. However, now I'm wondering if I have made a good choice in going over to SSDs. So the following questions:

Are portable SSDs a good choice for backup purposes? Are they reliable for this?

A friend of mine, though not a computer geek (nor am I) mentioned that he had read somewhere about 'bit-rot' with SSDs. He was really vague on this just saying that they made them not a good choice for backup purposes when compared to HDDs as the data on the SSD can 'rot' over time. So will my use of the SSDs suffer bit-rot over time?

I should add that my use of the drives will be restricted to once-weekly backups, the rest of the time they'll be detached from the PC and just sitting in a drawer.

Mooly · May 17, 2025

I've read something about that too and very recently. It might even have been on here. I think one point was that SSD's should be powered up relatively frequently to 'refresh' them since they work by retaining microscopic levels of electrical charge on the mosfet transistors that make up each cell... a little bit like a capacitor that holds charge. If that charge leaks away then the logic state of the cell is lost meaning the date (whether it was a 1 or a 0 is lost). The drive is still good but the data lost. In other words they are not suitable to use for storing data over many many months and years without ever being powered up unlike traditional HDD's. If you are using them frequently (few times a year) there should be no issue.

pseymour · May 17, 2025

Every storage medium has its version of bit rot: magnetic spinny platters, flash-based memory, optical media, tape, etc. No one's immune, but it happens in different ways for different media types.

Use your flash-based media every so often, so that it receives electricity. Store them someplace with a temperature range of 60-75 degrees Fahrenheit*, and decent human humidity, like 30-50%. Under those conditions, you would have to not use your SSD for several years before it "rots."

* = That's about 15-24 degrees in rest-of-the-world units.

Flashorn · May 17, 2025

Hi!
I own a T7 and have owned it for about 3 years now. I used it as storage before I installed a bigger nvme in my notebook.
It sat for about 7 or 8 months without being used and when I powered it up the other month, it still had all of it's files and programs on it
and nothing was lost.
I think that you might want to make sure that the TRIM has done it's work before removing it from the PC.
To make sure TRIM is active on your drive, use this command in a CMD prompt as Admin.(right click on CMD and choose Run as Admin).
Hit enter after entering the command.

TRIM ON Samsung T7 (verify that TRIM is active.)
fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

gunrunnerjohn · May 17, 2025

I use SSD's where they're certain to get powered within a couple of weeks between power cycles. However, they should retain their data much longer between power cycles.

The JEDEC standard specifies that an SSD must retain data unpowered for 1 year at up to 30 degrees Celsius. That's a minimum, typically it would be several years before it starts forgetting things.

Higher storage and operating temperatures will greatly accelerate the forgetfulness of any FLASH memory technology.

antspants · May 17, 2025

I buy Samsung EVO/QVO SSD’s and external casings. I have quite a few.
I’ll never by a Portable External SSD ever again. Especially not a WD or Seagate. But if I had to, the T7’s get good mentions. As do LaCie’s.

EDIT:

I also have one of these with 4 x 1TB SSD’s. Houses all my System Images and can be taken away, stored or used as a football if needed. It also doubles up as an Airfryer.

SABRENT USB 3.0 4 Bay 2.5” Hard Drive/SSD Docking Station (with fan)

pseymour · May 17, 2025

antspants said:
I’ll never by a Portable External SSD ever again. Especially not a WD or Seagate. But if I had to, the T7’s get good mentions. As do LaCie’s.

Seagate bought LaCie a looong time ago.

antspants · May 17, 2025

pseymour said:
Seagate bought LaCie a looong time ago.

Noooooooooooooooo!

As long as they didn’t change the drive, I suppose it wouldn’t matter?

pseymour · May 17, 2025

They're all IBM Winchester drives underneath.

antspants · May 17, 2025

Pull them apart and play Frisbee when they die? Make Ninja throwing stars out of them.

cereberus · May 17, 2025

All this angst about drives deteriorating over time is silly.

Backups are really there to protect against failure of a live system.

If you have critical data that you really want to keep for many years, store it on one or more decent cloud services which have redundancy built in to avoid such issues.

I seriously cannot think of any data that is so critical that I would want it to last in digital format for many years.

In the end, it is only documents like birth certicates that I would keep forever, and of course I use real paper for these, and even if lost can be re-obtained from Government agencies.

I bet most people never look at data more than two or three years old.

To me I bet most people hoard data "because they can".

Quandary · May 17, 2025

BuddhaNature said:
Are portable SSDs a good choice for backup purposes? Are they reliable for this?

A friend of mine, though not a computer geek (nor am I) mentioned that he had read somewhere about 'bit-rot' with SSDs. He was really vague on this just saying that they made them not a good choice for backup purposes when compared to HDDs as the data on the SSD can 'rot' over time. So will my use of the SSDs suffer bit-rot over time?

I should add that my use of the drives will be restricted to once-weekly backups, the rest of the time they'll be detached from the PC and just sitting in a drawer.

Portable SSD are fine for backup purposes even though bit-rot is real. Bit-rot occurs when the charge in a cell drops because of write inactivity. Reading the data or powering on the drive is not enough to prevent this happening. Writing restores the cells.
Do the following to keep you drive in good condition:
- initially run CrystalDiskInfo on it and record the read performance. It should show fairly consistent speeds across the drive
- run this performance activity every six months to check for any changes
- run DiskFresh or restore the backup from your second backup source every year or two
This last step writes the cells used making them fully charged.

gunrunnerjohn · May 17, 2025

cereberus said:
I bet most people never look at data more than two or three years old.

To me I bet most people hoard data "because they can".

In my case, you'd be wrong. I have electronic products that are close to 20 years old, just recently I did a redesign of a couple of them. Besides new PCB layouts and design changes, they got new software as well. That being the case, data that I hadn't looked at for many years suddenly got looked at. I also have had to keep up with changes in the development software for the software and hardware, that entails changes at times as well.

MisterEd · May 17, 2025

If you worry about the data becoming corrupt on one drive then have multiple backup drives. That way if one drive fails then you have the other drive to fall back on.

I trust external SSDs as much or more than external HDDs.

I also don't use external USB flash drives for long term storage. They are best used for temporary storage only.

gunrunnerjohn · May 17, 2025

Quandary said:
- run DiskFresh or restore the backup from your second backup source every year or two
This last step writes the cells used making them fully charged.

Why doesn't' that appear in the menu of the utilities?

bikemanAMD · May 17, 2025

I run the following for my backup drives (probably too much lol)

Seagate Portable 1TB External Drive ( Believe just 2.5inch HDD External)
Western Digital My Passport 2TB (Blue)
Western Digital My Passport 2TB (Red)
Western Digital Elements Desktop 500GB (Purchased 2003)
Western Digital My Book HDD 8TB Drive (Primary Backup drive)
Seagate 8TB in External Enclosure (Secondary Backup Drive

as well in another enclosure WD Black 1TB HDD, and WD Black 4TB HDD

Too much external storage? I'm thinking maybe so lol

Gonna clean off my USB flash drives tomorrow, maybe store on 8TB those files

though i'll be nervous for the first year on losing any data if i do swap over to External SSD lol, but thinks maybe i should soon, it takes hours to backup sometimes to these HDD drives lol

Someday i may invest in a External SSD Drive, and reduce my data hoarding lifestyle lol

I tend to worry on drive corruption alot--major worrier

So i don't know for me if an external ssd yet a good choice or not lol

TraderGary · May 17, 2025

I use two Samsung portable SSD drives in my backup strategy. I used two Samsung 2TB T7 drives for several years with never any problems. I needed larger drives for my current backup strategy so I'm now using two Samsung T9 4TB SSD drives.

Here's my current backup strategy:

I work entirely from my local 1 Terabyte C: Drive and all my data and photos are kept in my OneDrive folder. I'm a Microsoft 365 subscriber which includes 1 Terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage. I have OneDrive set to mirror my local OneDrive folder; thus I always have all my work backed up throughout the day in real-time as I work. This is vitally important to me as I don't ever want to lose anything I'm working on.

I make a Macrium Reflect image every night before shutting down, alternating between two Samsung T9 4TB Portable SSD's each containing 7 rotating daily images. The image currently only takes about 3 minutes to make. This results in always having a full image of my drive going back every day for two weeks.

Mooly · May 18, 2025

gunrunnerjohn said:
In my case, you'd be wrong. I have electronic products that are close to 20 years old, just recently I did a redesign of a couple of them. Besides new PCB layouts and design changes, they got new software as well.

Same for me. Simulation files, data sheets, designs.

I came down to the wire once with backups and at the last minute remembered I had an old Vista image containing the simulation files I wanted. Had to install Vista and the backup program and was able to recover the file I wanted. Never again. Lessons were learned.

Morph000 · May 18, 2025

Lifetimes of SSD's are into multiple petabytes (1PB = 1,000TB) so that's a LOT of read/write use before they start to go bad.
5-10 years or more depending on use. Advantages - low power, shock resistance. Disadvantages - high price. No 22TB SSD's out there for <$1k.

Steve C · May 18, 2025

cereberus said:
All this angst about drives deteriorating over time is silly.

Backups are really there to protect against failure of a live system.

If you have critical data that you really want to keep for many years, store it on one or more decent cloud services which have redundancy built in to avoid such issues.

I seriously cannot think of any data that is so critical that I would want it to last in digital format for many years.

In the end, it is only documents like birth certicates that I would keep forever, and of course I use real paper for these, and even if lost can be re-obtained from Government agencies.

I bet most people never look at data more than two or three years old.

To me I bet most people hoard data "because they can".

I use Microsoft Money from 2005. The data file I use daily has 25 years of transactions which I have wish to lose. Treasured photos and videos fall into the same category.

Solved Are Portable SSD's Good for Backup Purposes? How long will they last? And what about 'bit-rot'?

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