Looking for recommendations for a portable SSD to use for system images. I currently use a portable USB 3.0 HDD. It’s not the fastest, but it has been very reliable. Is there a portable SSD that is reasonably priced that would be much faster and just as reliable? I know inexpensive SSDs slow down once their buffers are full. What I don’t know is if that would still be much faster than a portable HDD.
I've been using a WD 1 TB SSD and two SanDisk 500 GB SSD with no issues. They are fast, but speed also depends on whether the computer is fitted with an SSD as well... They are all reasonably priced especially in the US.
This will largely depend on your USB port and the speed it is capable of. If you have USB 3.2 Gen 2 then you can get about 1 GB/s with the right drive. On my desktop it only gets 125 MB/s with some outdated USB 3.0 ports. Still faster than the mechanical drive but much slower. I have been using a SAMSUNG T7 Shield 2TB for a few months and it has been great. We have been getting a lot of failures with recent SanDisk drives.
True. I got a decent deal on WD 2TB which is of immense help for my imaging since i have a good amount of systems i backup manually. Two of my External Storage Backup Drives are Toshiba at just 1 TB each but they also have proven dependable so far and are reasonably priced.
I read somewhere that Toshiba is definitely the most reliable as far as HDD. I have a whole collection of HDDs: Seagate (4 TB and 2 TB) WD 1 TB (13 years old and still working perfectly) I only use them for data storage as they are too slow for frequent imaging… Reliability for SSD is probably the same for any brand as there are no moving parts, but there are probably other aspects to consider in terms of life expectancy...
Did the Samsung T7 Shield SSD work right out of the box with Macrium Reflect, or did you need to change any settings first e.g., passwords, encryption, etc.?
I'm not as up on the genuine longevity of SSDs but is of no matter since any SSDs i have are (like you) are backed up/imaged on mechanical platter drives which serve that exact purpose of storage of my systems. I also tend to lean on the assumption that Toshiba is reliable.
It's just a drive out of the box. Nothing should be necessary unless you want to change the file system. I always go NTFS.
They're not all made of the same parts though. Memory cells burn out after a limited number of writes. That number may be large but it is how most of them die. I've had 2 Mushkin drives die immediately after the warranty expired, and multiple SanDisk drives fail. The Samsungs are holding up and I have Intel that are a decade old and going. None of the Crucial drives have failed. Everyone can have a different experience but I will not be a repeat buyer of brands that have failed me.
Nor should you. It's the very reason that i mainly use mechanical drives for image backups and/or storage since you can tell when they are getting ready to bork in advance (mostly) giving you some time to evacuate data from off of it before it goes completely.
One can check the SSD health as well with suitable programs, Samsung Magician is an example. I have it installed only for this purpose. For USB portable SSDs the best protection is redundancy, I have 3 of them with exactly the same data and images, they can't possibly fail simultaneously...
Agreed, I have at least 3 copies of any data that I care about. Anyone that depends on a single copy of anything is going to be sad when that device ultimately fails.
Hi Jack, It is exFAT. I got myself one on BlackFriday, but have not used it yet. Here is screenie from my system (Dutch):
Thanks for the confirmation. I'd only keep it that way if I were using it on a Mac. NTFS is much better for Windows use. FAT32 vs. exFAT vs. NTFS: What’s the Difference? (howtogeek.com)
