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Is It Really Necessary To Back Up If You Have A SSD?

Maserati7200

Maserati7200

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 17, 2009
909
3
11230, Midwood, Brooklyn, NY, USA, North America
If I were to buy a computer with a SSD, my thoughts are that it wouldn't be necessary to back up. SSD's don't fail/crash/lose data like HDD's. That's the sole reason I back up now, my hard drive died, three times. And I'm thinking that it wouldn't make any sense to back up a more reliable SSD to a less reliable external HDD. It's like Bill Gates buying home insurance. He has $50 Billion plus in the bank, why pay someone to give you money if you need it if you have more spare money to than they will give you. In essence I'm saying backing up from something really reliable to something not so reliable is pointless. Thoughts?

PS. Hi
 
hi,

while ssd's wont crash like a hdd, they will still fail given enough time. ssds are limited by the number of reads and rewrites they can achieve

it is always good practice to back up. however, the risk is lessened iw ould think with ssds in terms of crashing
 
To elaborate, what if a power surge fries your HDD? What if someone steals your laptop? What if the SSD gets corrupted? Not to mention the obvious...these DO fail, not as often as spinning drives, but they DO fail. You're a fool to think otherwise.
 
is this a serious question??

what if your ssd on your macbook took a bullet which happened to save your life as you walk by bed-stuy or brownsville, but all your data is gone? how are you going to get it back? ...maybe that's a bad analogy :D (i assume you got a MB)
 
Heh, buying home insurance (or any insurance) is paying a small amount every so often to cover THE ENTIRE VALUE of any damage caused. If a fire came and destroyed his $100 million house with no insurance he'd personally fork out the money to rebuild it. But instead, his yearly premium of say $200k (I really have no clue to the US insurance prices) would cover that entire $100 million. It doesn't matter if Mr. Gates could build that house 500 times over.

In the same vien, purchasing a small external HDD (even USB) would suffice to backup your SSD. Firstly, you won't notice the backup, because SSD's have so much read speed you won't notice a small portion getting used up. Second, like insurance, it's a really small amount to pay for peace of mind.


While a corrupt page in a SSD will forever be locked to writes, but still be able to read. Do you know a situation where you won't be able to read it? WHEN IT GETS STOLEN.
 
yes.

Your computer could be stolen.
The drive could become corrupt.
The drive could wear out.
Something else could happen to the computer making it inoperable.

Backing up an SSD isn't expensive, use time machine and a $50 external drive, but it has the potential to save your @$$!
 
dukebound85 said:
hi,

while ssd's wont crash like a hdd, they will still fail given enough time. ssds are limited by the number of reads and rewrites they can achieve
Click to expand...

It's not just wear-out. SSDs are made up of chips soldered to a circuit board. So a solder joint could fail or one of the chips could fail taking out some or all of the data.

Greg
 
Maserati7200 said:
If I were to buy a computer with a SSD, my thoughts are that it wouldn't be necessary to back up. SSD's don't fail/crash/lose data like HDD's. That's the sole reason I back up now, my hard drive died, three times. And I'm thinking that it wouldn't make any sense to back up a more reliable SSD to a less reliable external HDD. It's like Bill Gates buying home insurance. He has $50 Billion plus in the bank, why pay someone to give you money if you need it if you have more spare money to than they will give you. In essence I'm saying backing up from something really reliable to something not so reliable is pointless. Thoughts?

PS. Hi
Click to expand...

No, because SSD's do not fail. They cannot be lost or stolen. They are indestructible, impervious to heat, and are enclosed in a force bubble that will protect them from crushed. They also retain every version of every file ever written to them so that you'll never have to worry about accidentally overwriting or deleting a file. So that's right. There really is no reason to back them up.
 
iSee said:
No, because SSD's do not fail. They cannot be lost or stolen. They are indestructible, impervious to heat, and are enclosed in a force bubble that will protect them from crushed. They also retain every version of every file ever written to them so that you'll never have to worry about accidentally overwriting or deleting a file. So that's right. There really is no reason to back them up.
Click to expand...

dont forget that they can cure cancer because they just can lol
 
Other things to consider

Backing up is important for more than just hardware failures. What about being able to go back to earlier revisions of files -- or files that you might intentionally or otherwise delete and then realize you need?
 
I actually had an SSD in a new MacBook Pro completely fail and need to be replaced after just a couple months. The guy at the Apple Store said that he had never seen an SSD fail before, but it happened so it's definitely possible.
 
Time machine makes it so dead simple, why not? And, as others have mentioned, what about those inadvertantly deleted or otherwise modified files?
 
when (not if) you stuff something up, You'll wish you had a back-up. Time machine is so easy, and has saved me many times after I broke the system or lost a file. It's not just incase the HDD fails, it's there incase the file fails.
 
RE:
"If I were to buy a computer with a SSD, my thoughts are that it wouldn't be necessary to back up"

If your Maserati was stolen, would you need a new car?
 
HDDs generally give some indication that they are dying.

With SSDs I would expect it works, now it doesn't type scenario.

Always good to back up your data for the reasons already mentioned in this thread. :)
 
It probably won't fail within five years. But yes, other things could happen.

If you have data on the computer and no where else, you are taking a risk.
If not, don't worry about it.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
yes.

Your computer could be stolen.
The drive could become corrupt.
The drive could wear out.
Something else could happen to the computer making it inoperable.

Backing up an SSD isn't expensive, use time machine and a $50 external drive, but it has the potential to save your @$$!
Click to expand...

Agreed, just because you have a SSD doesn't mean it is infallible.
 
Yes!!! back up your SSD. My OCZ Vertex SSD failed after just a month and a half of usage. I spent over $700 on it too!

OCZ< Intel
 
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