Solved Backup SSD

Tasmania Green · Feb 4, 2025

Those are good points. I’m glad I asked. Thanks. I’ll get an external backup drive.

How should I proceed?

antspants · Feb 4, 2025

I would advise the Orico, mainly because I can so far vouch for them (until one fails which hasn’t happened) Also, the ones I linked you to are only AU$15 or there abouts.
And an affordable M.2 or 2.5 inch SSD. Personally, I don’t know what the noticeable diff would be.
if you want a specific brand or type, someone here would know.

cereberus · Feb 4, 2025

antspants said:
The simplest answer is that if there is an electrical incident that fries your PC, the backups would be safe if not connected to your PC at the time.

A more compelling reason perhaps for laptops is risk of theft (if using external drives kept in a safe place, risk is much reduced).

However, using the two place backup rule (backup critical data to at least two separate places), I think it is quite adequate to backup all data to an internal drive PROVIDED critical data is also backed up to an external drive and/or a cloud service.

I keep my data on 2nd internal drive and periodically copy data to an external usb drive. Critical data is copied to onedrive as well (so in three places).

Kees · Feb 4, 2025

Tasmania Green said:
Why is it not good practice to keep your backup drive connected to the computer all the time?

Beside electrical reasons there's another reason to always keep at least one backup off-line.

That reason is ransomware.
If any of such malware might ever get your computer under control, it will encrypt all at that moment available drives.
So your backup would become worthless.

My measure to avoid such problems if ever happening is to keep a recent image of the system drive offline. And keep backups offline. If the system would report that all files are encrypted, I would first format the system partition(s), put back the image of a working system and only after that would have attached the external backup drive to the system. Possibly after first copying that drive to another drive on another system somewhere else.

Of course you could do backups in the cloud as well. They would be ransomware proof too, but I don't use any cloud storage other than free storage, simply because I can't effort it from my little pension. Free storage is rather restricted, so I only keep very recent files there, via a special routine that only copies datafiles from a certain date. Older files are backupped on a totally offline (out-of-the-house) place.

Until now I never got any malware in my system and hope to stay like that.

Tasmania Green · Feb 4, 2025

Definitely good points. Oh yeah. Thanks for sharing, guys. I really appreciate it. Yep. External driver it is. lol. And I know exactly where to store it when I'm not backing up my computer.

ditendra08 · Feb 4, 2025

What I would is to buy external drive (SSD if you're not on budget or HDD if you're on budget) and I would make backups on that external drive, because it's more safe this way. If backup drive is connected all the time to the system it's still vulnerable to viruses and cyber attacks. What drive you buy for backup isn't much important as long as it will have enough space for your backfiles, but yeah, if it's SSD than transfering will be faster.

hdmi · Feb 4, 2025

Tasmania Green said:
Why is it not good practice to keep your backup drive connected to the computer all the time?

When you connect the drive to the computer via SATA/NVMe/USB, the drive effectively becomes part of that computer's local storage. Whereas the definition of "data backup" mandates that the copied data is stored on a secondary information repository that is separate from the primary one, i.e., on a secondary storage location that is isolated from the computer that holds the original data.

Tasmania Green · Feb 4, 2025

ditendra08 said:
What I would is to buy external drive (SSD if you're not on budget or HDD if you're on budget) and I would make backups on that external drive, because it's more safe this way. If backup drive is connected all the time to the system it's still vulnerable to viruses and cyber attacks. What drive you buy for backup isn't much important as long as it will have enough space for your backfiles, but yeah, if it's SSD than transfering will be faster.

Oh yeah. I'll bring the external drive out, backup the computer, and then put the drive away again.

Tasmania Green · Feb 4, 2025

antspants said:
I would advise the Orico, mainly because I can so far vouch for them (until one fails which hasn’t happened) Also, the ones I linked you to are only AU$15 or there abouts.
And an affordable M.2 or 2.5 inch SSD. Personally, I don’t know what the noticeable diff would be.
if you want a specific brand or type, someone here would know.

I just realised this is just a case. I need to buy the PCIe memory separately, correct?

antspants · Feb 4, 2025

Tasmania Green said:
I just realised this is just a case. I need to buy the PCIe memory separately, correct?

Yes, case and an internal SSD 2.5 or M.2 drive to go into the casing. I like Samsung but there are so many drives these days
Make sure you get the right case for the right drive. The wider case is for the SSD 2.5”

I also like UGreen casings, I have a couple. This is USB-C in and out (Case only)

https://www.amazon.com.au/UGREEN-Enclosure-Aluminum-Adapter-Compatible/dp/B07Y825V4N/

And the Orico M.2 (Case only)

https://www.amazon.com.au/ORICO-NVMe-Enclosure-Gbps-Support/dp/B08G14NBCS/

Tasmania Green · Feb 4, 2025

antspants said:
Yes, case and an internal SSD 2.5 or M.2 drive to go into the casing. I like Samsung but there are so many drives these days
Make sure you get the right case for the right drive. The wider case is for the SSD 2.5”

I also like UGreen casings, I have a couple. This is USB-C in and out (Case only)

https://www.amazon.com.au/UGREEN-Enclosure-Aluminum-Adapter-Compatible/dp/B07Y825V4N/

And the Orico M.2 (Case only)

https://www.amazon.com.au/ORICO-NVMe-Enclosure-Gbps-Support/dp/B08G14NBCS/

Thanks. I’ll check those out.

Tasmania Green · Feb 4, 2025

antspants said:
Yes, case and an internal SSD 2.5 or M.2 drive to go into the casing. I like Samsung but there are so many drives these days
Make sure you get the right case for the right drive. The wider case is for the SSD 2.5”

I also like UGreen casings, I have a couple. This is USB-C in and out (Case only)

https://www.amazon.com.au/UGREEN-Enclosure-Aluminum-Adapter-Compatible/dp/B07Y825V4N/

And the Orico M.2 (Case only)

https://www.amazon.com.au/ORICO-NVMe-Enclosure-Gbps-Support/dp/B08G14NBCS/

We don’t have a lot of computer stores to choose from in the Hobart area, but we do have MSY. Can you take a look at their website and see if you can recommend anything there?

Fishmill · Feb 4, 2025

Be sure to examine the specifications of any external enclosure you buy. Some have limitations on the maximum capacity of the drive you will put inside it. Mine is limited to 2 TB, while the NVME drive in it is only 500 GB, so no problem. They are very handy and you can regard them as a fast and large USB flash drive. A lot faster than the typical thumb drive.

Nothing at all wrong with using an NVME or SATA SSD inside the PC as one backup, BUT...I would not have that be my ONLY backup.

I use a standard internal 3 TB HDD as my primary once or twice daily backup. It is not fast, but it reads or writes only 3 or 4 minutes a day for about 1 TB of data, so the speed advantage of an SSD would be of minimal importance. And it's cheap. If it were to fail tomorrow, I'd probably buy another HDD not SSD, purely because of the price difference. Circa 80 versus circa 200 or more for similar capacities.

I also use other secondary backup methods that involve external SSDs as well as thumb drives. They run less often.

The point is to use more than one method unless your data isn't of high importance. I'd guess that worldwide, most users don't backup at all.

hdmi · Feb 4, 2025

Tasmania Green said:
Oh yeah. I'll bring the external drive out, backup the computer, and then put the drive away again.

The problem with that is, if you only have one external drive, the number of backup copies you have gets reduced to zero each time when you bring it out. Also, merely unplugging the drive is not enough to "put the drive away again". It has to be stored in a safe location, away from the computer.

A very long time ago when magnetic tape was still commonly used as a backup medium, someone had put all the backup tapes on the roof of the server computer's enclosure. The server caught on fire, which generated so much heat that the tapes melted so all the data was lost permanently.

Nowadays a lot of people assume that having a NAS in a separate room is sufficient for it to be well-isolated from the computer. While it is true that modern NAS hardware usually has some certain combination of built-in protections that is specially designed to help mitigate multiple different types of added risks, these protections can still fail.

When talking about infrastructure at the enterprise level, added risks such as the potential risk that built-in protections in a NAS can still fail are always mitigated by applying the concept of redundancy, and also applying it beyond the principle of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). It means that the idea of having multiple different NAS solutions and multiple different connections, for example, is an idea that is both familiar and completely necessary.

However usually, the average home user does not require a NAS of any kind, as it also is possible to just grab a bunch of these ones (for example).

bobkn · Feb 4, 2025

Tasmania Green said:
Why is it not good practice to keep your backup drive connected to the computer all the time?

I'm not "glasskuter", but the idea is that you need a backup that would be safe if the PC had a catastrophic failure. Like a PSU going bad, and frying everything else.

I use an internal drive for quick backups, and external drives for backing that up.

Some people store an HDD backup in a safe deposit box at a bank.

I read a post in another forum from a guy whose house was destroyed in the recent California wildfire. Unfortunately, so was the bank. But he took a backup drive away with him, so he didn't lose everything. He also had a clean shirt and a couple of changes of underwear.

glasskuter · Feb 4, 2025

^^^what they said.
Plus,
if your machine gets stolen, no way to recover your data because your backups go with it if the drive is internal.
To go along with what @Scannerman said, If hackers ever get into your machine, they can easily erase backups or make them unusable along with infecting your system. Even if the drive is bitlocked, it can be reformatted. Either way, no more backups and you're left with an infected machine.

antspants · Feb 4, 2025

You’re not going to buy anything over 2TB, so don’t worry about enclosure capacity.

I’ll look at MSY shortly. Do you not have access to Amazon in Hobart?

Do you have any USB-C ports on your PC? Or only USB 3.1

Not a huge choice at MSY for enclosures

antspants · Feb 4, 2025

Is MSY like Umart? Is it pick up in store only or do they deliver? I haven't used them for a long time.
Stocks vary for products per store at MSY for pickup.

Oddly enough, stores for both Umart and MSY are in Glenorchy. Umart is def a pick up only.

You have more choice at Amazon & Umart, however MSY has a couple. But it depends if they deliver, it would have to come from the mainland?

So your choices are Amazon/MSY/Umart. Umart and MSY as you know is a 20-25min drive to Glenorchy.

ChrisPbass · Feb 4, 2025

glasskuter said:
It's a lot cheaper to build your own external drives and take nothing more than the nvme of your choice, 2 screws, and one of these. I have 4 of them. Amazon.com

I did this with a HPfx900 $200 for 4tb, very fast and super portable

antspants · Feb 4, 2025

Unless I get one sent to you via Amazon as I get free delivery. You can pay me after you receive it.

Solved Backup SSD

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