Backup is one of the things that everyone knows, necessary, planned to be made, but usually until it is too late. Here is a quick, easy way to create a portable backup solution that you can connect to any of your desired PCs.
Create my own portable backup solution
It is really extremely easy to throw your own portable backup together; You actually need only four things.
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A spare SSD. It can be NVME or SATA.
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An external ssd enclosure
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A USB cable
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A little time to configure the drive
I had an additional NVME SSD (a Western Digital SN850X) and a lot of USB-C cables. I just needed to choose an enclosure that let’s connect to my PC via SSD a USB port. Ultimately, I settled on an enclosure of Ugreen with a maximum transfer rate of maximum 10GBPS.
At that time, this was the fastest USB-C port speed on my PC, so it did not understand to spend extra at the speed I could not use.
All I had to do is to format the drive and plug it, then use whatever backup software was correct. On Linux, I use RSYNC; On the windows, I use Robocopy.
Choose your ssd
If you are making your own exterior backup, then the first thing you have to do is a real SSD if you do not have one.
You can use a SATA SSD or NVMME SSD, but if you are buying new NVMME SSD would advise to buy a NVME SSD – the cost of NVME Drive is almost the same as SATA these days, and they are excess Fast and more compact.
The big thing is their speed to pay attention.
The reading and writing speed of the drive is usually expressed in the gigBytes Per second (GB/s), while data transfer rates are usually expressed in terms of gigBits Per seconds (GB/s or GBPS-Lowercase B is an important part). There are 8 bits per byte, so at any time you read or write speed in GigaBytes Per second, you can multiply by just 8 to get your transfer speed per second gigabits.
The NVME drive normally connects its PC using the PCIE interface, which means they are very sharp. Even the PCIE 3.0 Nvme drive may have data rates above 3 GB/s (or 24 GBPS), PCIE 4.0 Drive may reach slightly higher than 7GB/s (56 GBPS), and PCIE 5.0 drive regularly is more than 13GB/S (104 GBPS).
In practice, this means that you are going to be limited by the speed of USB or Thunderbolt port on your PC instead of the speed of your drive. The USB 3.2 2×2 has a maximum speed of 20 GBPS, USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 have a maximum speed of 40GBPS, and Thunderbolt 5 and USB 4 V2 have a maximum speed of 80GBPS under normal conditions.
Connected
Thunderbolt 5: What is it, and how fast it is?
More power, greater speed, and more possibilities.
This means that even the most dull PCIE 5.0 drives are going to be faster than the most state-of-the-art USB-C port on your PC, and there is no point in spending top dollar for extra speeds you cannot use. PCIE 5.0 drives also run extremely hot and sometimes require active cooling, which adds cost and complexity to your drive attachment.
Stick to PCIE 4.0 Drive. I am using a SN850x that I have picked up on sale and is very happy with its performance.
Choose your ssd attachment
Once you take out your SSD, you need to choose an attachment.
Why did I make my external SSD instead of buying a premiere
The construction of your SSD is easy, fun, and may also be cheap!
With SSD, you should only buy an attachment that you are actually going to use. At the time when I threw my enclosure together, the fastest USB on my PC was at the top of Port 10GBPS, so I bought 10GPS attached.
You can consult your motherboard manual to know what is the fastest port on your PC, but once you do, there is a small chart here showing that if you have a given port then what is worth buying the speed of the enclosure.
A red X indicates that the port in the question will not be able to handle the speed of the enclosure, and you should consider buying something else. A green and white probe indicates that the port is at least as fast as enclosure.
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USB 3.2 1×1 |
USB 3.2 2×1 / USB 3.2 1×2 |
USB 3.2 2×2 |
USB 4 / Thunderbolt 4 |
USB 4 V2 / Thunderbolt 5 |
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Attaching speed 5GBPS |
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Attaching speed 10gbps |
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Attaching speed 20gbps |
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Attaching speed 40gbps |
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Attaching speed 80gbps |
Keep everything together
Once you keep your attachment and SSD in hand, you just need to keep them together. Usually you do not require any equipment for this, but you may need a small screwdriver.
In my case, it was as simple as to open enclosure, slotting in SSD, catching small silicone retainers in place, and then closing it again.
Set your backup
Once you physically drive and assemble the attachment, the only thing that is left for format the drive.
Connected
How to format on Windows 11 Hard Drive or SSD
Wipe and prepare your drive for the exciting life of data storage adventures.
I am going to move the drive between a Windows desktop PC and a Linux laptop, so I opted to format the drive as an exfat, which is compatible with all the major operating systems. If you are going to use drives especially on Windows PC, you should probably use NTFs instead.
I do not care much about taking backup of my operating system settings, so I established RSYNC on my laptop to backup some important folders, and I configured Robocopy to backup my files on Windows 11.
If you want to create a restore point for your operating system, you will need to create two separate partitions on your portable SSD. One will be formatted as NTFs and will be used to protect Windows 11 restore points, and the other requires Ext 4, so that you can use the timeshift on Linux.
Remember, SSDs do not rent well if they leave unpublished for a long time. You run the real risk of losing data.
If you want to store information for more time, a mechanical hard drive is placed in a cool, dry place, perhaps safe. And if you want In fact Backup for a long time, then I suggest print the physical copies and keep them safe somewhere.
