External SSD drive as a main data partition?

[ChrisGreaves]

Suppose a client with two sites some 20 KM apart. Each site has its own computer. The client needs to do computer-work at each site, depending where today’s problem is. The computers are NOT modern; one of them has no internet access, so Cloud/OneDrive etc storage is not an option.

I start thinking that a 1TB SSD USB drive might work. Load the data partition onto the SSD drive and carry that small (4”x2”x1”) drive back and forth.
No moving parts so low risk of damage.

And SSD is almost a super-capacity thumb drive.

The current status of any data file is always on the SSD, but a read-only copy could be made available on each site by a simple copy from the SSD to the computer. This might even be a sound backup policy; one of the two backup copies would be off-site at any time.
Setting this up ought to be simple, even with encrypted drives. Instead of mounting a HardDisk0 partition, the client’s boot sequence could just mount a HardDisk1 partition.

There must be something wrong with this strategy or I would have thought of it before, right?
Thanks for any comments or suggestions.

Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

That should work. It's probably fairly uncommon nowadays that a computer doesn't have an internet connection.

[PaulB]

SneakerNet, anyone?

[ChrisGreaves]

That should work. It's probably fairly uncommon nowadays that a computer doesn't have an internet connection.

I agree, I'd guess that in North America something upward of 99.99% of computers (desktops & laptops & terminals) as distinct from smart phones HAVE hard-wired 24/7 connection to the internet.
That said there are still impoverished church parishes, and folks who just want to balance their cheque-books.

Back in 2012 the large chartered bank CIBC adhered to a strict policy of NO VBA because the directors were managers back when viruses in Normal.dot were all the rage. Paranoia dies hard!

A slight correction to my post: I think that a mobile SSD drive might be more easily implemented if the original data partition was encrypted, because then the drive-letter assignment might be managed more easily as a script/batch command than having to decide between a drive letter assigned in Computer, Manage, Disk Management? With the added benefit of being able to fall back to the onboard encrypted partition if the SSD isn't available.

Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

SneakerNet, anyone?

You laugh, but I believe that three techies established a world record for data transfer rates when they drove a DEC PDP-10 cartridge from the Physics building in the University of Western Australia to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital back in 1973/74.

Your homework assignment: could that data rate be exceeded with a briefcase full of TB SSDs on a scheduled flight Ottawa to, say Toronto?
Cheers, Chris

[StuartR]

I think that there would be a problem with search indexing in this scenario. That may or may not be important to you.

[ChrisGreaves]

I think that there would be a problem with search indexing in this scenario. That may or may not be important to you.

Hi Stuart.
I think that by "Search Indexing" you are referring to the Windows file search facility as in "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties".
If so, I have that turned off on my machines because I use Everything for searches, and Everything seems to be conscientious about keeping indexes up to date. (I haven't yet rigorously tested the currency of Everything's indexes).

The client I am using for the model is, sad to say, not yet at the point of searching diligently for files.

If you mean something else please advise.

I am still trying to wean said client away from using the WPD format for a newsletter. The original editor had a copy of Word Perfect, but one machine system has only MSWord while 20 Km away only LibreOffice is available. But the operators still load/save in WPD regardless of the word-processor in use, and, strangely, their newsletter keeps getting itself corrupted!
Cheers, Chris

[StuartR]

[BobH]

It seems to me that an SSD might be over kill. How much capacity is needed? There are thumb drives and even the little micro-SD cards that can accommodate 1 TB easily. Wouldn't that form factor be better than SSD which would, presumably, have to be inserted into a USB-connected external drive case?

[ChrisGreaves]

It seems to me that an SSD might be over kill. How much capacity is needed?

Good points, Bob. For the specific case I have in mind, indeed, a 4MB device would probably suit.
These small clients cause me heartache because they believe that they need to make a backup just before the hard drive crashes. You know the sort.
Yet all the parish finance (or retail paint shop business) is waiting to disappear.
Professionally I ended up refusing to work on a stand-alone computer unless I had watched a backup being made.

By thinking of the data being stored on a USB SSD I am turning the tables. Now they get to copy the SSD to the local computer each session and are therefore making a backup of the SSD to a HDD each week. (I have WON!)

There are thumb drives and even the little micro-SD cards that can accommodate 1 TB easily. Wouldn't that form factor be better than SSD

As above, probably yes, but again, small personal business tend to have files scattered all over the data partition, or in many cases, across the only partition, so bundling everything onto the USB SSD is a simpler process than nit-picking individual files.

FWIW while we are copying the HDD to the SSD we get to discuss aspects of operations; I get to make penciled notes on sheets of paper, we photocopy those and start a 3-ring binder which you and I would call the Operations Log. I can get a lot of work founded during that so-called idle time.

....which would, presumably, have to be inserted into a USB-connected external drive case?

20240627_160907a.jpg

Get with the flow, Joe! We are all hi-tech here in Bonavista (I wish). I can order these little babies online, plug 'em in, and start encrypting the drive overnight ready for the next day.

Now my mind is flipping over. I will be testing the setup here before I inflict it on any client, paying or not. I have two laptops here, and plan to use them on alternate days. Whereas in the past I "worked on my laptop" I will now be "working on my SSD"
The prospect of traveling to some remote town in Texas and having in my pocket my Life's Work (almost!) since 1990 is liberating.
"But" I hear you say "I don't have Everything installed here, nor Veracrypt nor ..." but they are all in a folder "T:\Appl\" on my SSD.

No need to open up and power up a laptop at the airport. Just walk on to the 'plane ...

This is a strange feeling. For the first time in my computer life I need NOT be tied to any machine; it must be like this for folks whose storage sits entirely on The Cloud, except in my case, I own my own data.

Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

So you're on

[ChrisGreaves]

So you're on

9 my friend, not quite yet. I am still RoboCopying from the regular daily backup to the SSD (on another laptop). Then I make tonight's regular backup from this laptop, then re-Robocopy (won't take ten hours!) to the SSD.
Tomorrow I will manually dismount the T: partition on this laptop hard drive and then mount the SSD, (Later edit the autoexec.bat)

But still and all these strange thoughts have run around my head. I am typing this post and looking at that second SSD (photographed for BobH), staring at that SSD and thinking "I've come a long way from a large briefcase with two boxes of 2,000 punched cards each ..."

As well as "I can work using any of my laptops that still function with just this SSD drive ..."

Cheers, Chris

[BobH]

Chris, inquiring minds 'wont' to know!

Do you make an image backup on the SSD? That would make you own your own OS as well as your data.

I need to redo my backup protocol as I now have 2 many PCs not to mentions iOS devices. What would you recommend if one has a 1TB SSD installed in an external enclosure, USB attached? I'm thinking that I could define a partition for each PC, install appropriate software (what would you recommend?) on each PC then simply SneakterTAM the SSD between devices to perform backups.

[ChrisGreaves]

I need to redo my backup protocol as I now have 2 many PCs not to mentions iOS devices. What would you recommend if one has a 1TB SSD installed in an external enclosure, USB attached? I'm thinking that I could define a partition for each PC, install appropriate software (what would you recommend?) on each PC then simply SneakterTAM the SSD between devices to perform backups.

Hi Bob. Please can you give a list of
(a) a few of the drives you have
(b) the drives (partitions) on each machine.
I'm going to recommend RoboCopy, but don't worry about that yet.

Your loving nephew, Chris

[BobH]

OK, in the spirit of sharing so all can learn, here's a screenshot of my laptop disks. The other PC is the HP small format device new to me and not yet functioning. See this post. . It has a 256GB SSD and no external storage.

DiskMgmt.png

In addition to those always-attached devices, I have a plethora of thumb drives and SD micro cards with varying capacities up to and including a 1 TB micro card, which blows this old mainframe guy's mind. How is it possible to record so much data on material the size of fingernail and as thin as a whisper and not requiring power to retain its contents? Well, Captain Grace Hopper gave me the answer back in the '70s. She said that they were working on encoding data on the molecular structure of different structures which would allow very high data densities. At the time I think she mentioned metals like stainless steel. Apparently things changed and metals became oxides or something.

[ChrisGreaves]

Do you make an image backup on the SSD? That would make you own your own OS as well as your data.

No Bob. I don't make an image backup.
As I understand it (but please don't let anyone know how little I know) an Image backup, especially a bootable image backup, constrains me to only one physical machine per physical backup device.
When I go to resuscitate four laptops (as I did last year) that belong to a family, I like to backup all four laptops, and all physical drives on those laptops, to a single SSD which I can label with the family's name.

I see your situation ("I have many PCs") as a "family" situation, where each PC might belong to a different member of your family.

The question becomes "How can we backup the data for each family member, with a single mobile SSD?"

I see your Disk Management of a single PC. That PC appears to have FOUR data partitions- C:, D:, E: and F: that we need to worry about.

I was about to go to bed and read a book, so I''ll start again tomorrow morning.
Once I've moved the overnight load of grass clippings.
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

There must be something wrong with this strategy or I would have thought of it before, right?

There are a few obvious problems when the two (or more) machines belong to the same user who DOES have internet connections and makes use of a mail client such as Mozilla Thunderbird:-
Thunderbird stores mails in Thunderbird-folders which are represented as pairs of files "InBox" and "Inbox.MSF" as an example.
Downloading an incoming email on Machine1 will see that email stored in the "Inbox[.MSF]" pair on Machine1.
Downloading an incoming email on Machine2 will see that email stored in the "Inbox[.MSF]" pair on Machine2.

Similar arguments apply to browser bookmarks, and so on.
This implies that an implementation on a single-user multi-machine configuration would require careful management of not just C:\Users data, but user-data in general. In particular I see a problem with (for example) doing email at the client site, then rushing home for a quick lunch and doing email at home, without carefully coordinating the SSD data.

Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

There must be something wrong with this strategy or I would have thought of it before, right?

A super-timid correspondent has, by PM, suggested I should look at speed.

I had considered that the SSD might be throttled by the USB port. I reasoned that USB throttling was there regardless of the speed of the attached drive, but that SSD offered the advantage of no-moving-parts, so that as a mobile backup device (or in my case as the core of an inside-out computer) it offered less chance of damage through being dropped or tossed into the rattling side-pocket of a car door.

That said, I don't know enough about speeds. I think that in general:-
(1) The SSD, being slow-speed RAM, is faster than a spinning HDD
(2) USB ports are fast, but slower than SSDs or RAM memory.
(3) HDDs are slower than RAM
If my data is stored on a HDD inside my laptop, then data flows from device to device, left to right in the diagram below:-

Laptop HDD ---> laptop RAM ---> Laptop USBport ---> {USB HDD | USB SSD}

Please and thank you: where is the bottleneck most likely to be? I figure that, as always, "quantities may differ".

Thanks, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

I need to redo my backup protocol as I now have 2 many PCs not to mentions iOS devices.

Bob, I have uploaded a MSWord2003 document, zipped to 384Kb (so too large for Eileen's Lounge) at www.chrisgreaves.com/Downloads/20240630_1132.zip

Bob, I have uploaded a MSWord2003 document, zipped to 378Kb (so too large for Eileen's Lounge) at www.chrisgreaves.com/Downloads/20240701_0648.zip

In short, it presents enough instruction to implement the RoboCopy backup of a single computer's data files to a 1TB USB drive.

It begins: I present a solution for backing up ONLY a Windows PC; I have no idea how to hookup an iOS or Android smartphone as a drive to a PC, but I suppose that it could be done.

And it ends with: If by now you are happy that RoboCopy can make a good backup, we can progress to embedding these commands in a batch file or script so that you can:-
(i) Plug the USB drive int a computer’s USB port
(ii) Run the batch/script file from the USB drive
(iii) Walk away feeling confident that all the data files will be backed up.
But that is a topic for another day (I promise!)

The basic RoboCopy command presented is

Code: Select all

RoboCopy t:\ h:\%computername%\ /A-:SH /S

Cheers, Chris

[BobH]

Alas, security says that the download didn't occur because the file cannot be trusted.