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Sd cards for redundant and on the go Time Machine backups
- Thread starter A1423
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Have you considered using Samsung portable SSDs for that purpose? We use ours to backup Time Machine and they have worked fine for us. I believe current models come in 1TB and higher capacities.
Don't use a SD card, just use an external disk. You can get pretty cheap HDD these days (I have a WD 5TB Elements Portable HDD and a Seagate Portable 5TB External Hard Drive HDD both are around $110) or get a cheaper external ssd or ssd/enclosure, I have a Qwiizlab M.2 NVMe and SATA External Enclosure, with a Leven JPS600 2TB SSD (enclosure and ssd +/- $105.-). All are used for backups and storage that I do not need quick access to.
What I did was to pick up a 2TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 SSD on sale for $140 and a TB4 enclosure for $50. So for under $200, I got an external SSD that's blazing fast for backups.
I use a flush-mount SD card in my 14" MacBook Pro's SD card slot as redundant backup for when I'm on the go.
I will preface this by stating that I'm 10000% aware that SD cards are not to be trusted.
1) I'm very, very careful with backups. My data is worth more than the computer. For backups, three is two, two is one, and one is none.
2) When I'm at my desk, which is 90% of the time, my MBP is plugged into a Samsung T7 Shield SSD and a network drive for backups (both are Time Machine targets), in addition to the SD card TM backup. Additionally, almost all my data is stored on in either an iCloud Drive-synced folder or a DropBox-synced folder.
3) If I'm not at my desk, but still at home on my wifi, I'll still get backups saved to the network drive, and backups will of course get automatically saved to my SSD when I re-dock my MBP. Plus, file changes get synced to iCloud or DropBox.
4) When I'm away from home, I don't like the fact that backups aren't happening other than what gets saved to my iCloud Drive or DropBox (presuming I've got wifi service or I'm tethered to my iPhone's hotspot. So, I've got a flush-mount SD card that is also the target of hourly Time Machine backups. So should my machine somehow fail shortly after saving an important PowerPoint slide deck or something like that while on an airplane with no wifi/cell service, I'll likely have a backup of it (and my other stuff of course) that I can access after repairing or replacing the machine.
Now, I 100% understand the following: SD cards are not reliable. Constant, hourly backups to an SD card will very likely cause the SD card to fail sooner.
I'm ok with this because the SD card is a redundant backup (3rd backup target when at home, not counting iCloud Drive which isn't exactly a backup - since fatal edits could take out the one copy on iCloud) and because if the SD card fails in, say, a year, I'll just replace it.
I will preface this by stating that I'm 10000% aware that SD cards are not to be trusted.
1) I'm very, very careful with backups. My data is worth more than the computer. For backups, three is two, two is one, and one is none.
2) When I'm at my desk, which is 90% of the time, my MBP is plugged into a Samsung T7 Shield SSD and a network drive for backups (both are Time Machine targets), in addition to the SD card TM backup. Additionally, almost all my data is stored on in either an iCloud Drive-synced folder or a DropBox-synced folder.
3) If I'm not at my desk, but still at home on my wifi, I'll still get backups saved to the network drive, and backups will of course get automatically saved to my SSD when I re-dock my MBP. Plus, file changes get synced to iCloud or DropBox.
4) When I'm away from home, I don't like the fact that backups aren't happening other than what gets saved to my iCloud Drive or DropBox (presuming I've got wifi service or I'm tethered to my iPhone's hotspot. So, I've got a flush-mount SD card that is also the target of hourly Time Machine backups. So should my machine somehow fail shortly after saving an important PowerPoint slide deck or something like that while on an airplane with no wifi/cell service, I'll likely have a backup of it (and my other stuff of course) that I can access after repairing or replacing the machine.
Now, I 100% understand the following: SD cards are not reliable. Constant, hourly backups to an SD card will very likely cause the SD card to fail sooner.
I'm ok with this because the SD card is a redundant backup (3rd backup target when at home, not counting iCloud Drive which isn't exactly a backup - since fatal edits could take out the one copy on iCloud) and because if the SD card fails in, say, a year, I'll just replace it.