I already have the JetDrive Lite 330 1TB and works great.
But I am now looking to make another backup using USBC or TB4.
I checked out ACASIS TB4 enclosure and they look great, except it cost over $100CAD for just the enclosure. I recall there is another brand of enclosure that uses the same ASMedia AMS2464 chip chips as ACASIS but at a much greater price. I can’t seem to find it anymore. Anyone have idea on an affordable TB4 enclosure?
If not, regular USBC memory storage would do. I heard SanDisk had some issues with there USBC Memory storage. Any recommendation?
Not sure about the cheaper brand you’re referring to, but I’ve got the ACASIS one for about two years now (two of them) running them with a Samsung 980 Pro and they’ve been rock solid, connected 24/7 to my MacBook and Mac mini.
Only downside is that they get crazy hot and have noticed that they consume power when connected to my Caldigit docks even if the Macs are off (or not connected at all). Easy to solve and I’ve been a smart plug on each my docks which I turn off when I’m done for the day.
Edit: Forgot to say that speeds are as advertised, close to 3000 MB’s even when really hot (they don’t seem to throttle).
Thanks for your comment and is nice to get a confirmation from actual users!
I am however debating on getting a SATA USBC drive instead due to cost and better reliability for overall backup strategy (as advise from a friend, if you are planning to backup, is good to backup in different media type or online, mix it up).
What do you mean by “USBC Memory Storage”? To me that sounds like a flash drive, but later then you say “SATA USBC.” SATA is one way of connecting a drive, and USB-C is another.
If you just want a USB-C all-in-one drive, the Samsung T5/T7 are small, reliable external SSD drives. I love them.
In my experience, the drive speed frequently isn’t the limiting factor for file-level backups. You may be happy with a less-expensive dock plus some raw drives.
What I mean is all-in-one external storage that uses USBC as connection method and SATA drive as storage media. USBC is prefer method of connection because I use MacBook Pro (obviously as I am posting my question in MacPowerusers lol).
What surprises me is, it appears, there are no USBC for SATA based external hard drive… Only if you uses a USBC adapter (which I am avoiding).
Yes, Samsung T5/T7 seems reliable too. Will consider this as well.
I am trying to do is save all my photos. Everything else are saved in Google Drive or OneDrive.
But going back to the question, do you actually need a dock that takes SATA drives? Or do you just need a USB-C hard drive?
For $70 you can get a 1TB external spinning disk that connects via USB-C. All-in-one. And if you need more storage, you can go up to 5TB or so for around $140. You probably can’t touch a drive + dock for that price.
Seagate has affordable external pocket sizes spinning USB-C interface drives in the 1TB and 5 TB capacity.
Here in US, Costco often puts them on sale, otherwise the online stores have deals from time to time.
For SSD, I dumped all the Sandisk/WD drives, given their terrible customer service and known actual flaws resulting in total data loss for which class action lawsuits are pending. (I even moved away from Sandisk SD and Express camera media. Although no big issues, I just can’t see supporting such a sleazy company as WD since they bought Sandisk.)
For SSD, I. have been using Crucial 2TB and 4TB drives. Seem on par or better, than the popular Samsung T series, but I prefer the aesthetics of Crucial. (I used to always use their SIMM and DIMM modules in the days when we could actually add memory to our computers and laptops).
Note: I still use the USB-C external spinning drives for archiving (Carbon Copy Cloner or Time Machine) because of the lower cost/bit storage and the longer term power-off time.
(SSD drives are spec’d for only 1 year, although people have varying experiences of much longer time, I don’t want my archival drives to be intentionally used off-spec.)
I moved away from burnable media years ago, because I used to burn DVDs for everything and I stopped believing their longevity claims. I’d buy known, good brands and discover later - when the discs were unreadable - that they’d switched out at some point for a cheaper process.
Not that hard drives are viable for super-long-term storage either, but new ones seem to keep getting cheaper per terabyte, transferring data periodically is something that I’m used to, and the process of burning discs en masse is both time-intensive and error-prone as opposed to drives where I can start 16 TB of copying and largely walk off and not worry about it.
If all my data fit in 100 GB (that ship has long since sailed ) I’d probably take the gamble on buying supposedly-high-quality discs and burning one each week or two.
If you want reliability, then periodically (every 5 years maybe?) moving the data onto a newer device as @webwalrus mentions is a good idea. If it’s critical/valuable.
This can be a bit of a chore, but you can pay someone else to do it. This is called cloud storage.
My DSLR photos currently live on a T7 because I don’t have room on my internal storage. That T7 gets backed up by Time Machine and Backblaze, but that will only last a year, tops, in the case of accidental deletion of originals. So I also archive them (copy, but never delete) to Backblaze B2 (an Amazon S3 clone).
I currently have just over 1 TB of photos on B2 and it’s costing me about USD$7.00 per month.
This does, of course, pre-suppose good internet speeds. If you have this, it’s a very viable option. I use rclone to periodically send up new files. I’ve not needed to download any yet, but have peace of mind that even if my whole house ceases to exist, B2 will still be there.
I started using this process after an incident where I discovered I had “lost” 3 months of photos when migrating from Lightroom to Aperture, or the other way around (sigh). The thing was I only realised this years later, so all my regular backups were useless. I was fortunate that I found them on an old disk that I suspect I used when changing computers.
In a few days I will have my new MacBook Pro that will have space to store my photos internally, at which time CCC will be pressed into service to periodically clone the photos back out to that T7.
For me, photos takes up a lots of storage space and it keeps increasing!
I have my QNAP NAS with 2TB redundant setup at home in North America. But since I am now in China, I can’t do my backup to it. Yes, my QNAP can do cloud transfer but is super slow…
My Jetdrive Lite 330 1TB has been a great addition. Can’t advise enough how useful it has been to me. I use a paid program call iCareFone to backup all my photos from my iPhone to my Jetdrive. Super simple and works.
Now I am looking for one more layer of backup and it appears to me SATA based external drive with USBC is what I needed :). Thanks to the discussion here! SSD is just not as reliable and SATA is more cost effective.
For other things, such as contact list, email, files, I am all Google and OneDrive based with just the standard free account. Haven’t ran out of space yet and I do delete my emails religiously if not needed.
Just a friendly reminder a NAS is not sufficient by itself. It can be stolen, damaged in flood or fire, etc.
Just because it has redundant internal storage doesn’t make it, by itself, the only backup needed.
I’m sure folks here are aware, but first-time NAS buyers are sometimes surprised to realize they haven’t found the holy grail of backup simply by owning a NAS.
Excellent reminder. I have a Synology NAS and I use their HyperBackup software to automatically (and scheduled) backup the NAS to offsite backup services — two of them.
I bought myself a MAIWO K1717 enclosure with ASMedia 246X Chips. It is currently showing as USB4 mode. Any idea if it is possible to force it to use TB4? Anyone successful done this with any MAIWO enclosure?
) I’d probably take the gamble on buying supposedly-high-quality discs and burning one each week or two.
