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Protecting the SSD?

T

Tarek

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 25, 2009
398
78
Cairo
Before I purchased my latest MacBook, I read that although SSDs are perhaps the best in the market at the moment, their lifespan isn't too long and they aren't the most reliable type of disk drives out there. I would like to know if there are some pro tips on how to expand the lifespan of a SSD and avoiding failure. My old MBPs (2008 and 2010) still have working mechanical hard disk drives and I've never had an issue with either of them.

I'm assuming that the first tip is to occasionally perform full backups of my SSD's contents, but what else is out there?

And on another note, is it better to have the laptop in sleep mode or to shut it down if you use it on a daily basis but not all the time? I've always kept all my laptops in sleep mode and I am not sure if that is the right thing to do, but I've not really experienced problems with doing that (besides the occasional restart to freshen things up).

Thanks guys!

EDIT: I have followed the tips in this article except for the ones made for Macs with both a SSD and a HDD. Are there any risky ones mentioned that I should be aware of? Like the RAM disk one, for example?
 
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Thank you! That definitely makes me feel better about the whole situation.
 
Modern SSD have long lifespan and their reliability has been greatly improved. You don't need to do anything specific to protect the SSD. Just back up your important data periodically incase something goes wrong(highly unlikely).
 
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I am looking into buying a small external hard disk drive because of budget issues. My SSD is only 256GB anyways so that shouldn't be an issue. Is TimeMachine the best tool for a full backup or are there other methods out there? Excluding iCloud because our upload speeds in Egypt are terrible.
 
SSDs are just as reliable and long-living as any HDD, perhaps more so. Backups are a must no matter which storage media you use. For backup, I use a combination of time machine drives and rsync scripts. If you want to be on a safer side, use multiple redundant backup drives. Time machine has always worked reliably for me, but there are users who have reported issues.

Edit: removed a erroneous failure rate estimation, sorry for confusion!
 
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leman said:
SSDs are just as reliable and long-living as any HDD, perhaps more so. Backups are a must no matter which storage media you use, as the failure rates are over 1/3 in 3 years. For backup, I use a combination of time machine drives and rsync scripts. If you want to be on a safer side, use multiple redundant backup drives. Time machine has always worked reliably for me, but there are users who have reported issues.
Click to expand...

You're stating that the failure rate is over 33% in a 3-yr time span. I don't subscribe to that. Do you have any data to back that up?
 
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