SSD or HDD for use as a clone drive?

[Mirai]

Most modern motherboards have a secure erase in the Bios too that you can just use.

As for the "Check the TBW spec. I'm sure your SSDs will outlive your PC unless you write to them 24/7." above..
...yeah that depends entirely on the user, as an example I eat through 20-40tb a month write cycles.

the only ssd I have seen outlive the rated TBW was my old ancient OCZ agility 120gb.. that thing had a 40tbw rating and it wrote well over 300tb without failing. Was just replaced 'cause it was the oldschool ssd's that were only 200mb/s speeds, whereas nowadays its so common for ssd's to fail wellbefore even hitting their rated cycles.

Samsung's.. the old mlc drives from 970 evo/pro days etc were the good stuff, most their crap now is just sticker tax + tlc chips with m0erse high layer counts that wear out very fast.

The drives are guaranteed for at least that amount of TBW. So even if the drive says QLC, if the drive box says 300TBW, and it fails within 3-5 years warranty (some are 3 years, some 5) or with less written than that, he gets his money back.

He doesn't look like a guy who is going to be using them as a scratch disk for 4K DaVinci Resolve projects.

The best Samsung Pro drives are TLC. You can't even get MLC drives anymore. Samsung Pro NVME drives are probably the best consumer SSDs you can get, and they're TLC. WD Black are also TLC drives. Some people will claim WD Black are better than Samsungs.

We have several Samsung 850 Pro MLC SATA3 drives - those had a 10 year warranty on them. But their TBW rating was lower than the rating of the TLC, 980 and 990 Pros. Even the new 9100 Pros use TLC.

Can you even get MLC drives anywhere anymore? If the memory makers no longer manufacture such, and there's only a few of them: Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix.

 

[Exaelea]

The drives are guaranteed for at least that amount of TBW. So even if the drive says QLC, if the drive box says 300TBW, and it fails within 3-5 years warranty (some are 3 years, some 5) or with less written than that, he gets his money back.

He doesn't look like a guy who is going to be using them as a scratch disk for 4K DaVinci Resolve projects.

The best Samsung Pro drives are TLC. You can't even get MLC drives anymore. Samsung Pro NVME drives are probably the best consumer SSDs you can get, and they're TLC. WD Black are also TLC drives. Some people will claim WD Black are better than Samsungs.

We have several Samsung 850 Pro MLC SATA3 drives - those had a 10 year warranty on them. But their TBW rating was lower than the rating of the TLC, 980 and 990 Pros. Even the new 9100 Pros use TLC.

Can you even get MLC drives anywhere anymore? If the memory makers no longer manufacture such, and there's only a few of them: Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix.

Oh yes, mlc and slc drives are plentiful, depends on how deep your pockets are... as in enterprise class. I usually stick to consumer drives with 2400tbw. (some tlc's still get this high endurance)

The 980's and 990's that bricked themselves? no thanks. same with the old 840's (or was it the 850's) that had to use up its own endurance as the only fix to retain its data due to crappy firmware they couldnt fix any other other way to prevent data degradation.

 

[Mirai]

Oh yes, mlc and slc drives are plentiful, depends on how deep your pockets are... as in enterprise class. I usually stick to consumer drives with 2400tbw. (some tlc's still get this high endurance)

MLC of 10 years ago had lower TBW ratings than current TLC drives. If you are enterprise you use an enterprise drive I suppose. The OP however is not really enterprise and I'm sure his QLC drive will outlive his machine.

The 980's and 990's that bricked themselves? no thanks. same with the old 840's (or was it the 850's) that had to use up its own endurance as the only fix to retain its data due to crappy firmware they couldnt fix any other other way to prevent data degradation.

Only had two SSDs die on me, Intel and OWC. Both were MLC.

No issues with Toshiba, WD, Sabrent, Samsung, Transcend and Sandisk.

 

[RaptorSA]

For me, who cannot allow a work PC to die without having a quick partition restore/clone solution to get back to where I was, the best was to run a UrBackup server on either windows or linux on a cheap network PC somewhere... then it doesn't matter if you're using a slow or old spinner drive, it does an initial full image backup then differential backups of only the data that changed after that.

The thing works like a charm... it just has a little client tray icon service app that you click on or set scheduling and other parameters in and will automatically do a full system image of all OS's you're running on your network, it snapshots and runs in the background so has almost no effect on your machine when you're using it.

If you want to add a new PC/OS you just open the web UI for the server, select client download and it'll create and download a little installer for the new OS you want to keep images for... so it's set up and forget.

Clients are available for most OS's.



Windows tray service utility where you can manually kick off, cancel or schedule backups etc. etc.



List of my networked PC's that are being auto backed up:


Backup process running for my Desktop PC:



List of current backups for Desktop PC:



When you want to restore a machine you just use the ISO image to boot and it will automatically pick up the network backup server and ask which date you want to restore the machine back to.

For my setup I have iVentoy running on a container somewhere with the ISO loaded so if something happens I can just network boot from a LAN port and do the restore from there without needing the USB drive.

This is why I prefer smaller SSD's for running my OS's too (<=512Gb), I'd rather have a new backup drive in a closet somewhere that I can pop in and restore to than a large 2Tb+ NVME boot drive that's too expensive to keep replacements for.

 

[netstrider]

Say a bad update from one Mint OS version to another. Any major failure I guess, like a SSD failure.

It's just the way I have always done it.

You can use Timeshift to restore to a previous point.

 

[Grant]

Each of my macs is married to an external ssd, with the external being a clone to enable booting from the external - if needed.

the externals are AngelBird 1TB
AngelBird runs USB 3.2 - then connected via thunderbolt makes for quick booting.
The read/ write speed of the ssd is about 1800MB/s (if i recall correctly).

They are fairly expensive, but near indestructible and very small.

 

[Mirai]

Each of my macs is married to an external ssd, with the external being a clone to enable booting from the external - if needed.

the externals are AngelBird 1TB
AngelBird runs USB 3.2 - then connected via thunderbolt makes for quick booting.
The read/ write speed of the ssd is about 1800MB/s (if i recall correctly).

They are fairly expensive, but near indestructible and very small.

View attachment 1854891

View attachment 1854892

For Macs if you want top external performance Thunderbolt is the way to go. Thunderbolt also passes TRIM commands while USB does not on the Mac, despite so called "UASP" capabilities of the drive. I had a USB connected Samsung 850 start failing on me because it never received TRIM commands from the Mac. Once inside a Thunderbolt enclosure the problems ceased.

With Thunderbolt 5 and new NVMEs you can get really fast 10MB/sec speeds. Even TB4 can easily give you 3-4MB/sec speeds. Acasis makes great enclosures and WD or Samsung make great NVME drives to put inside them.

The enclosure below is TB 5 compatible but my M3 is maxed out at TB 4 speeds.

 

[Grant]

I had a USB connected Samsung 850 start failing on me because it never received TRIM commands from the Mac. Once inside a Thunderbolt enclosure the problems ceased.

. Acasis makes great enclosures and WD or Samsung make great NVME drives to put inside them.

ta
seems i need to go shopping again !!

 

[Mirai]

If you do decide to get the ACASIS TB501 Pro you'll also need an additional thermal pad as the included thermal pad is too thin to make proper contact and cool the NVME SSD. Use that instead of the included pad.

Amazon.co.jp: Awxlumv Thermal Conduction Sheet, 4 Pcs 70x22x2mm Heat Dissipation Sheet Thermal Conductivity 12.0 W/mk Thermal Pad M.2 nvme ssd GPU PS5 Chipset Smartphone for Heat Protection, Double-Sided Heat Conduction Silicone Pad : Computers

Amazon.co.jp: Awxlumv Thermal Conduction Sheet, 4 Pcs 70x22x2mm Heat Dissipation Sheet Thermal Conductivity 12.0 W/mk Thermal Pad M.2 nvme ssd GPU PS5 Chipset Smartphone for Heat Protection, Double-Sided Heat Conduction Silicone Pad : Computers

www.amazon.co.jp

70mm x 22mm x 2mm




As you can see full TRIM support:

 

[Grant]

If you do decide to get the ACASIS TB501 Pro you'll also need an additional thermal pad as the included thermal pad is too thin to make proper contact and cool the NVME SSD. Use that instead of the included pad.

getting complicated now.
is this really necessary tho ?

the clone drives (in my case), are simply to boot from an external source in the event of some failure on the part of the main internal drive - and then attempt a repair - not for the purpose of running a laptop from an external drive.

or
to restore content from the clone drive to a new drive in the event of critical failure of the internal drive resulting in a need to replace.

question here i guess is - would the external drive really get that hot when performing either of the above tasks ?