Advice on portable SSD drives please.

daivid

I'm wanting to buy an external SSD drive to back up (and free some space) on my laptop (windows 10) and to do the same with an iPad Air (4th gen). I'm tempted by the Samsung T7 touch as my understanding is once set up the finger print encryption works with iPads (ones with USB C ports at least). The question that's nagging in the back of my head is will the SSD drive be happy being used with both a Windows computer and an iPad? Not simultaneously but storing files from both and being accessed by one or the other in turn? Any advice would be welcome, and apologies if this is a daft question! 

tacpot12

It's not a daft question. You will need to ensure that the drive is formatted with a file system that both the iPad and Windows 10 can use, and uses a Partition Scheme that both can use. 

There is some discussion here about connecting external SSD drives to iPads. External disk ssd for iPad Air 2019 - Apple Community

FAT32 is supported by Windows 10 and all iPads, exFAT is supported by both but only when using the latest versions of IOS. 

One improvement that exFAT offers over FAT32 is the maximum filesize. In FT32, this is limited to 4GB, which is usually large enough for everything apart from hi-res videos. If you are going to want to move large video files between laptop and iPad, exFAT will be a better choice as it will not have this limitation.

The MBR partition scheme seem to allow FAT32 and exFAT volumes to be used on both iPads and Windows 10. [This thread suggests that the GPT (Guid Partition Table) partition scheme will not work: My Ipad pro cannot read my external hard … - Apple Community]

To give you rights to return a SDD you have bought and formatted, you might want to ask the question of the vendor before you buy it. If you tell them what you want to do with the drive and they confirm that the drive can do it, you can return the drive for a full refund if it won't.   

CoastingHatbox

Have you considered Network Attached Storage?

I would use a handful of external hard disks on rotation for backing up files, rather than a single one, because they are susceptible to loss/damage. But if you are backing up from multiple devices, and perhaps sharing files between those devices, a NAS starts to make a lot more sense. You can use multiple hard disks in the NAS in a RAID configuration. This means that if a hard disk fails, you can replace it without losing any data. RAID isn't a backup though, it won't protect against corrupt or accidentally deleted files. But you can look at routinely backing the NAS up to the cloud, to external hard disks on rotation etc..

The only two positives I see, of using an SSD, is that it is portable and will provide (possibly) faster file access. Oh and it may well be cheaper.

Remember your data doesn't really exist unless you have at least 3 copies of it and one of those copies is at another physical location.

daivid

Thanks for your reply, I think it explains everything. The Samsung T7 is pre-formatted to exFAT so should be fine, the iPad is the latest Air so will be fine with this. I will ask the vendor as you suggest for extra piece of mind. 

Edit- The above was to tacpot12.

CoastingHatbox thanks for your input, some points to consider. From a quick look the NAS option is a fair bit more expensive as you hinted and beyond what I really need, I think. For the most part I will be transferring files without any great value but that I don't want to delete. I will also be backing up some photos of greater (sentimental) value so as you will say I need to get organised and pick out the ones I really want to safeguard and print them and store them online also.

daivid

Having used the Samsung T7 for a month or two I can say it works perfectly well with both the iPad (air 4) and my laptop. The one gripe I have is the finger print reader seems to 'forget' my finger print if not used for a while. This means having to reset the finger print by opening up the settings using the laptop and password, just a bit of a faff for me, but if you only had an iPad it would be a nightmare (or you would have to use without encryption).

Jenni_D

Do you specifically need an SSD as your backup media? An SSD is great for a boot/using drive but if it fails they tend to just go - there's often no warning. With an HDD (old rust spinner) you usually at least get a heads-up that it's on the way out, which gives you a chance to recover the data on the drive (in case you don't have an alternative backup).

Heedtheadvice

^^^ spot on Jenni_D

SSDs are great operational drives but for secure storage do not let you down gently! Now you see it....,now it's gone rather like a USB stick.

daivid

Thanks both for your input. I was aware of the shortcomings of an SSD and as I mentioned further up I will use it to free up space - storing things I don't want to delete but wouldn't lose sleep over their loss, to transfer files between laptop and iPad, and yes to back up some items I really don't want to lose (but not the only back up).

Peter999_2

daivid said:

Having used the Samsung T7 for a month or two I can say it works perfectly well with both the iPad (air 4) and my laptop. The one gripe I have is the finger print reader seems to 'forget' my finger print if not used for a while. This means having to reset the finger print by opening up the settings using the laptop and password, just a bit of a faff for me, but if you only had an iPad it would be a nightmare (or you would have to use without encryption).

Thanks for coming back and letting us know it works fine.   This will no doubt help other people searching with the same request.   It's pretty annoying when people raise threads like this and don't come back to say if they resolved it successfully.