Advice Request Difference between external and internal SSDs ?

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jetman

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I am considering purchasing an external SSD drive for fast backups etc.

However, looking at prices (for example on the Crucial website) I notice that a 1TB external SSD drive is about 50% more expensive than a 1TB 2.5 inch internal SSD.

Based on the above, I'm considerding buying an internal SSD drive and putting it into an adaptor case so I can use it like an external drive.

But is there a difference in the hardware I am buying ? Are external drives more expensive for good reason ?
 
F

ForgottenSeer 85179

External drives are instantly useable while with a internal drive, you first need to research about good case and buy it.

Also these products are mostly comes with closed case which cannot open easily (keyword warranty) which someone want as feature.

Anyway what's your PC hardware? If you doesn't own a fast USB generation, a external SSD doesn't make sense for speed reasons
 

Vitali Ortzi

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External drives are instantly useable while with a internal drive, you first need to research about good case and buy it.

Also these products are mostly comes with closed case which cannot open easily (keyword warranty) which someone want as feature.

Anyway what's your PC hardware? If you doesn't own a fast USB generation, a external SSD doesn't make sense for speed reasons
I'd go with a good hard drive for storing data/backups. They are significantly cheaper per GB, very reliable and come in plenty of large sizes to store any amount of data that a normal person would have.
I recommend looking at Reddit pc sales sub Reddit for lower prices and using a cashback as well

I am considering purchasing an external SSD drive for fast backups etc.

However, looking at prices (for example on the Crucial website) I notice that a 1TB external SSD drive is about 50% more expensive than a 1TB 2.5 inch internal SSD.

Based on the above, I'm considerding buying an internal SSD drive and putting it into an adaptor case so I can use it like an external drive.

But is there a difference in the hardware I am buying ? Are external drives more expensive for good reason ?
Internal drives have better latency !
Though pricing can vary from one to another
Usually getting external hard drives is cheaper then you can just rip the package and use it internal
ssds are in my experience opposite
 

Evjl's Rain

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it's not recommend to buy an external SSD because when it fails, all your data is gone, hardly recoverable
usually, the speed of external HDDs is fast enough except when your AV slows it down (especially Windows Defender) or you copy many tiny files or your internal storage speed is slow. You may get upto 100MB/s or even more

external SSD might be very quick at the first 15-25GB. Then, it will be even slower than an HDD if you continue copying files to it (SLC cache/buffer is full) in case you have a cheap TLC SSD
 

jetman

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What would you recommend for daily backups- an external HDD or an external SSD ?

I was looking for something to use with Macrium Reflect or Acronis but I'd like it to be as fast as possible at backing up and restoring.
 

jetman

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I am investigating alternatives to Rollback RX which takes snapshots each day and allows the user to restore a windows system to a previous state within a minute or so. I know this isn’t a backup solution, but it does provide a useful and fast way of reversing errors or problems. Its saved me a number of times when I have experienced unexpected system crashes etc. or have installed software I would like to remove without trace.

I have read that Macrium Reflect can take incremental backups each day and can restore to these backups very quickly (never tried it though). However I’m not sure how fast it works compared to Rollback RX. Unlike Rollback RX, Macrium requires an external storage device . Presumably a SSD would be much faster than a HDD for this task ?
 

shmu26

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I am investigating alternatives to Rollback RX which takes snapshots each day and allows the user to restore a windows system to a previous state within a minute or so. I know this isn’t a backup solution, but it does provide a useful and fast way of reversing errors or problems. Its saved me a number of times when I have experienced unexpected system crashes etc. or have installed software I would like to remove without trace.

I have read that Macrium Reflect can take incremental backups each day and can restore to these backups very quickly (never tried it though). However I’m not sure how fast it works compared to Rollback RX. Unlike Rollback RX, Macrium requires an external storage device . Presumably a SSD would be much faster than a HDD for this task ?
Macrium restores are fast (on the paid version, which has the incremental feature you are talking about) but not as fast as Rollback.
The free version, which only does full and differential backups, has a slower restore speed. This is because the paid version is better at detecting the bits that changed, and it restores only them.

You don't need an external storage device to use Macrium. I do restores all the time from Macrium backups that are stored on my second internal hard disk.
You might be able to do it with only one internal hard disk if you make a separate partition on which to store your backups. I never tried that so I can't vouch for it.

Macrium takes time to do its job, regardless of what type of storage media you are using. The disk onto which you are restoring is more important than the disk on which you put the backup, because write speeds are slower than read speeds.
If you are restoring from an external disk, unless you are using USB 3.1 or better, I don't think you will see a big difference between HDD and SSD.

External disks with USB 3.1 are a bit pricey last time I looked. I wanted one, but I had to settle for USB 3.0 because of budget.
 

Freki123

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Unlike Rollback RX, Macrium requires an external storage device . Presumably a SSD would be much faster than a HDD for this task ?
I got macrium paid version and when I redeploy a backup most of the time it takes <2mins . When there were only a few changes and not a 8 month old backup or so. My OS is on a ssd while I use a hdd (internal) as my storage device.
 

jetman

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These are interesting answers. I have a paid version of Macrium and will experiment with an old laptop I have.
(I'm not going to try and use Rollback RX and Macrium on the same system as that's asking for trouble- and is a separate topic anyway !)
 

shmu26

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These are interesting answers. I have a paid version of Macrium and will experiment with an old laptop I have.
(I'm not going to try and use Rollback RX and Macrium on the same system as that's asking for trouble- and is a separate topic anyway !)
I have used both in the past, and back then, the biggest issue was that performing a Macrium restore would destroy Rollback backups. So it was useful on a testing system where you want quick restores at a whim (Rollback) and reliable restores in case of real need (Macrium)
 

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