For backing up 50 GB or less, are flash drives dependable?

not as the sole backup destination, and not as an archival format. They are handy and generally work pretty well as a way of easily moving files around. But they are quite prone to failure and shouldn't be relied on for anything beyond an extra "safety backup" or convenience factor. They just fail.

They'll work until they don't....

Also they'll generally be slower than other drives.

All the flash drives I've owned generally don't seem to last nearly as long as 'normal' drives. Maybe that's because they get tossed in pockets or bags, maybe it's because they're made with cheaper components, etc. When they do fail, they tend to go into 'read only' mode, so for a backup this might be an ok tradeoff.

Sadly, Paper is still the #1 long lasting archival solution.

So a conventional spinning HD or an SSD will offer greater life and dependability?

What about burning data to DVDs? I read quite a bit about it a few years back but haven't researched it lately.

I use them for tax info, genealogy and photos.

Fred

Seems to be a good idea! Large, but practical.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2018 10:21AM by clyde.

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Fred_Also
What about burning data to DVDs? I read quite a bit about it a few years back but haven't researched it lately.

I use them for tax info, genealogy and photos.

Fred

Wow! Someone else uses discs... DVDs (and CDs) have a long working life IF-you use quality name brand products and store them properly.

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cbelt3
Sadly, Paper is still the #1 long lasting archival solution.

Yeah, as long as it is acid free and stored right.

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DP

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Fred_Also
What about burning data to DVDs? I read quite a bit about it a few years back but haven't researched it lately.

I use them for tax info, genealogy and photos.

Fred

Wow! Someone else uses discs... DVDs (and CDs) have a long working life IF-you use quality name brand products and store them properly.

Some drives support writing to M-Disc CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray media. That is supposed to have an archival much longer than standard dye based recordable discs.

IMO, HDDs are the best for backups. Flash drives use low quality NAND and regular SSDs are too expensive and their performance is wasted in a backup scenario.

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Lew Zealand
IMO, HDDs are the best for backups. Flash drives use low quality NAND and regular SSDs are too expensive and their performance is wasted in a backup scenario.

I would agree. 1 TB is overkill, but should be able to find one for under $50. And 50 GB via USB 3 should only take a few minutes at most. Use it as a full bootable backup, not just the 50 GB.

My real answer is the cloud. If its under 50 GB, iCloud for $1. Or amazon drive for $3 (1 TB).

Or If you have your own domain, you could upload to it via FTP. Or any

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

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DP

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Fred_Also
DVDs (and CDs) have a long working life IF-you use quality name brand products and store them properly.

I have a bunch of Sony CD-R's on hand and an iMac with a reader/burner. 700 MB/disk can't compete with a HDD, but will suffice for up to 700 MB…

The only flash drives I've had "go bad" were defective garbage from day 1.
Lucky so far. Everything else I've seen fail in some way or another.
I've had Apple install discs go bad used once and put back in the box and tried again 2 years later so I don't consider DVD a good archival media despite alleged stated capabilities.
I only trust multiple redundant copy hard drives, checking them often and hoping for the best, because they do fail.

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There are a lot of amazingly cheap no-name flash drives available (through ebay, etc.) which are mostly garbage. They were cheap enough that I was tempted to try a few. But I was trying to use them as an OS backup when switching away from Snow Leopard. I couldn't get any of the no-name garbage Chinese flash drives to even checkpoint on the clone (using Apple's Disk Utility). On the other hand, no problems at all with more expensive name brand drives (like Sandisk).