Sandisk Extreme SSD 1TB

[Alwyn]

In April last year I bought a Sandisk Extreme SSD 1TB portable drive and use it for regular weekly CCC backups. Somebody recently suggested that Sandisk drives were not reliable. I have been using their memory sticks for years without any problems and this SSD drive seem satisfactory. My brother-in-law has an 8 year old PC with a 222GB capacity of which he is using 57.2GB.

I guess a 250GB SSD portable drive would be quite adequate. Any advice on reliability would be welcome.

There seems to be a huge variation in prices so the choice is rather bewildering.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

SSDs are great for quick access time and so on, however, I wouldn't recommend them for daily/weekly backup functions where you are constantly writing to them. Traditionally HDDs are best for this sort of action and they end up being cheaper too.

But if want to augment your internal storage, then the SSDs is a great use case.

 

[chscag]

Read the many online reviews that are available for the SanDisk Extreme Portable External SSDs, and then decide for yourself.

 

[Alwyn]

SSDs are great for quick access time and so on, however, I wouldn't recommend them for daily/weekly backup functions where you are constantly writing to them. Traditionally HDDs are best for this sort of action and they end up being cheaper too.

But if want to augment your internal storage, then the SSDs is a great use case.

There seem to be conflicting views on this as Randy B. Singer wrote this in February last year in response to my query about CCC backups.

"I'd just like to point out that if the above backup is a rotating disk hard drive, and you upgrade your Mac to Big Sur, that your backup clone drive will be non-optionally re-formatted as APFS.

A rotating disk hard drive fo"matted as APFS, when you go to use it as a boot drive and/or to do a restore from it, will be molasses slow. It will be so slow as to be impractical for use. Under Mojave and later, when doing a bootable clone backup, you really need to use an SSD rather than a rotating disk hard drive."

At that time I was using a 1TB HDD to clone our 2 iMacs (see my Mac's Specs) every time I upgraded the OS. On his advice I bought an SSD with which I am satisfied although I now schedule backups on CCC every week. I continue to use the HDD to back up my wife's iMac.

In addition I have an Apple Airport Time Capsule permanently backing up both iMacs and another external HDD updated roughly once a fortnight as a Time Machine so I think, without being complacent, I'm probably well covered.

My brother-in-law has no backup at all and, although at 79 he has slowed down mentally, he loves playing around with graphs and such on his PC and would be devastated if he were to lose his data. He is struggling to master an iPhone SE so we hope to persuade him to give it to his wife and switch to a Doro.

Is there an equivalent to Time Machine for a Microsoft Windows PC or is it best to install CCC on his PC with regular weekly backups either to an HDD or SSD?

 

[MacInWin]

There seem to be conflicting views on this as Randy B. Singer wrote this in February last year in response to my query about CCC backups.

"I'd just like to point out that if the above backup is a rotating disk hard drive, and you upgrade your Mac to Big Sur, that your backup clone drive will be non-optionally re-formatted as APFS.

A rotating disk hard drive fo"matted as APFS, when you go to use it as a boot drive and/or to do a restore from it, will be molasses slow. It will be so slow as to be impractical for use. Under Mojave and later, when doing a bootable clone backup, you really need to use an SSD rather than a rotating disk hard drive."

What has changed the discussion is the arrival of Monterey and the difficulty in getting a bootable external drive at all. Add to that the change in approach on the new M1 Macs, and in the future having a bootable external backup will become both difficult and of lower value. While it is theoretically possible to boot an M1 system from an external, I will tell you from my experience that it is both hard to do and hard to undo, once done. I've stopped that theoretical approach altogether. So, no my CCC backup is for my data only, and speed is not an issue, so a rotating drive does just fine.

What Randy said then is still valid for older systems, Intel-based Macs and older versions of macOS. But for newer Macs (Apple Silicon) and Monterey, not so much. Of course, SSDs are always faster, and may well replace all rotating drives over time, but you don't NEED an SSD for a Monterey backup, particularly on an Apple Silicon machine

 

[Alwyn]

Thanks for your useful comment. My iMac is a 2017 model upgraded to Big Sur and, from what you say, I shouldn't upgrade to Monterey.

In advising my brother-in-law on what to use for his PC it looks as if he doesn't need a SSD drive to clone it.

 

[MacInWin]

From Bombich (the developer of CCC):

Carbon Copy Cloner requires macOS. CCC will not run on Windows.

 

[chscag]

In advising my brother-in-law on what to use for his PC it looks as if he doesn't need a SSD drive to clone it.

Your brother in law can use Acronis True Image to clone his PC to an external drive.

Acronis True Image 2021 for PC