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Buyers be Warned

blackxacto

blackxacto

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 15, 2009
1,296
159
Middle TN
19,1 iMac, Monterey 12.3.1, 64GB RAM + 1TB Buffalo External SSD:

I connected a 1TB Buffalo SSD (USB cabled) and tried to backup my main internal drive to it using Carbon Copy Cloner 6. I let it run for 16 hours and it never finished, so I stopped the backup. I ran DriveDX on the Buffalo. No issues. The SSD Enclosure gets very hot when in use.

I have a 1TB Buffalo External Hard Drive (USB cabled) so I backed up my iMac to the 1TB Buffalo Hard Drive to compare backup times: 1.5 hours.

Is anyone else experiencing this Buffalo SSD failure?
 
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I mean if you'd change partition scheme to Master Boot Record instead of GUID partition table, will be there any difference?
 
If you're going to use CCC to clone a Mac running Monterey, you want your external SSD to be formatted to APFS with GUID partition format.

I'd erase the Buffalo SSD with disk utility and try again.

Before you begin the new clone, I suggest you run a "speed test" app on the drive, such as BlackMagic Speed Test.

What kind of reads do you get?
Post your findings here.

Something else:
Some SSDs, when the internal temps get hot, "throttle back" their speeds.
Could this be happening to yours?
 
RESOLVED: After making several tests and sending results to Buffalo Support, Support issued me a RMA. Received the replacement 1TB SSD. Works great. Yes, it is slower than some I can purchase, but it copies all data from my main drive of 335GB I n a little over an hour, and make updated backups in 10 mins. I can live w that for $76.
 
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Guess what? Buffalo support has charged me a total of $60 for shipping their warranted replacement to me, and me shipping the bad ssd back to them. $60 to ship a WARRANTED $76 SSD. I don't advise anyone to buy from BUFFALO any longer. Their warranties are crap as they expect you to pay shipping both ways, and of course they use FedX to ship. Talk about a true rip off. Buyers be warned.
 
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I never heard of buffalo anything but the Bills!
in the future, I can recommend Western Digital and OWC is expensive, but honest.
others here love Samsung and Seagate for there mac back up needs.

if there anything on their website that states they comply with macs, that $60 fee is gouging.
If they are based in the USA you can contest this.
 
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MBAir2010 said:
I never heard of buffalo anything but the Bills!
in the future, I can recommend Western Digital and OWC is expensive, but honest.
others here love Samsung and Seagate for there mac back up needs.

if there anything on their website that states they comply with macs, that $60 fee is gouging.
If they are based in the USA you can contest this.
Click to expand...
Or the wings! ?
 
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I buy "bare" SSDs (no enclosures).
Then I buy the enclosure of my choice, and "put it together" myself.

Things go better this way.
Same with platter-based hard drives.
 
MBAir2010 said:
I never heard of buffalo anything but the Bills!
in the future, I can recommend Western Digital and OWC is expensive, but honest.
others here love Samsung and Seagate for there mac back up needs.

if there anything on their website that states they comply with macs, that $60 fee is gouging.
If they are based in the USA you can contest this.
Click to expand...
I have never heard from them either. The name alone sounds sketchy. Does anyone know which SSDs they are using for their products?
 
OW22 said:
I was going to go with the Samsung T7 but read some issues users were having with them and Macs
Click to expand...

I have three 2TB Samsung T7's, one is permanently connected to my 2018 Mini and is very heavily used with literally millions of files. Another one is used to clone that SSD and the third one is a clone of the Mini's internal 2tb SSD. I also have three of the old Samsung T3's that have been heavily used.

Never a problem with any of them and I plan to buy more. Where have you read about issues with Macs? I see that kind of thing in the Amazon reviews and just don't believe them, maybe people did not properly format them for the Mac? I re-format mine as APFS before using.
 
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Boyd01 said:
Never a problem with any of them and I plan to buy more. Where have you read about issues with Macs? I see that kind of thing in the Amazon reviews and just don't believe them, maybe people did not properly format them for the Mac? I re-format mine as APFS before using.
Click to expand...
Nice post
but
This January i formatted an external drive spinning disk (non ssd) using Catalina formatted for a mac mini2012 AFTS
just to see how Catalina operated, which was good were everything work, but Mojave was the main OS i needed.
I selected EBMojaveHD to restart and ejected the Catalina external
shut down
restarted
nothing worked, the Mojave launched after 45 seconds
but the bluetooth, wifi and files were missing.
after a reboot, reset PRAM, prayed to the apple gods and restarted
same thing
so i reinstalled Mojave from Time machine and everything worked then!
who knows what i did, or why this did not work on the mini.

that is my why things dont work for several mac users story, and im sticking to that!
 
MBAir2010 said:
Nice post
but
This January i formatted an external drive spinning disk (non ssd) using Catalina formatted for a mac mini2012 AFTS
just to see how Catalina operated, which was good were everything work, but Mojave was the main OS i needed.
I selected EBMojaveHD to restart and ejected the Catalina external
shut down
restarted
nothing worked, the Mojave launched after 45 seconds
but the bluetooth, wifi and files were missing.
after a reboot, reset PRAM, prayed to the apple gods and restarted
same thing
so i reinstalled Mojave from Time machine and everything worked then!
who knows what i did, or why this did not work on the mini.

that is my why things dont work for several mac users story, and im sticking to that!
Click to expand...
Forget using HDs any more w later macOS. Unless you go several versions back. Its like the wasted Fusion drive. Fusion was an attempt to make newer OSs work w HDs. Just forget using Fusion drives and HDs for your production Mac w later macOSs. Except for external backups. And then booting from external backups is disappearing w later macOSs. Carbon Copy Cloner is fazing out booting from their backups. Its just collecting the DATA portion which is MIGRATED to a clean installed macOS.
 
jav6454 said:
Quick question, why use CarbonCopy instead of Time Machine?
Click to expand...
I can tell CCC6.1.1.1 to backup only once a day, or multiple times a day. TM will backup hourly, for all disks you choose to use. If you choose several disks to backup using TM, that's alot of activity on the system. However, maybe it doesn't matter w a fast machine. I like being able to plan the backups.
 
jav6454 said:
Quick question, why use CarbonCopy instead of Time Machine?
Click to expand...

With older versions of MacOS the big advantage is that CCC will make an exact copy of your disk that can be used to start up the computer - a "bootable clone". So, if you have a problem and need to access your files in a hurry, just plug in the external SSD with the clone, start your computer and you are immediately up and running. I still run Catalina and have a bootable clone on a 2tb SSD. As I posted above, this doesn't really work starting with Big Sur.

But there's still a big advantage to CCC on newer versions of MacOS because your backup disk is an exact copy of all your files that is ready to go, it just can't boot the computer. With Time Machine, you have to restore your files to another disk before you can use them. This could take a long time.

But IMO, you should have both Carbon Copy and Time Machine backups, they each have their own advantages. Time machine is great because it can continuously backup in the background and allow you to easily revert to earlier versions of your files, or files that you accidentally deleted.
 
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Boyd01 said:
With older versions of MacOS the big advantage is that CCC will make an exact copy of your disk that can be used to start up the computer - a "bootable clone". So, if you have a problem and need to access your files in a hurry, just plug in the external SSD with the clone, start your computer and you are immediately up and running. I still run Catalina and have a bootable clone on a 2tb SSD. As I posted above, this doesn't really work starting with Big Sur.

But there's still a big advantage to CCC on newer versions of MacOS because your backup disk is an exact copy of all your files that is ready to go, it just can't boot the computer. With Time Machine, you have to restore your files to another disk before you can use them. This could take a long time.

But IMO, you should have both Carbon Copy and Time Machine backups, they each have their own advantages. Time machine is great because it can continuously backup in the background and allow you to easily revert to earlier versions of your files, or files that you accidentally deleted.
Click to expand...
That makes sense. I have never needed a bootable copy of my devices.
 
blackxacto said:
I can tell CCC6.1.1.1 to backup only once a day, or multiple times a day. TM will backup hourly, for all disks you choose to use. If you choose several disks to backup using TM, that's alot of activity on the system. However, maybe it doesn't matter w a fast machine. I like being able to plan the backups.
Click to expand...
Ahhh, ok, better control over copies.
 
Also, CCC can run multi-core and does not seem to constrain CPU usage, so backups run really fast when fast storage is used (e.g. external SSD). This is quite advantageous for frequent backup jobs while on the move. When the backup is not successful, CCC will explain the reason(s) in the error message.
 
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UPDATE: I have learned that to start the RMA return I filled out a Buffalo form in which I ok’d payment of $20 for shipping. Oddly Buffalo never collected this payment. After the new SSD arrived and the BAD SSD was returned, Buffalo charged me $40 for shipping and collected the $. I responded that I would agree to pay $20 for shipping, but not $40, since the SSD was bad. I was surprised to receive a refund of $20 today.
 
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