I bought two SSDs in the end

That imminent first Covid-19 jab will mean an escape from possible death for me. And I am now happy to report that my digital data is also - short of extreme circumstances - beyond the reach of catastrophe. I have carried out a General Backup for the first time in three years. And it will be routinely repeated every six months henceforth. 

Why is this such a big deal, and worth more than one post, you might ask. Here's why.

My digital Photo Archive, accumulating since 2000, but including scanned pictures back to 1965, is now immense. It would break my heart if it all got deleted. I need multiple copies, in different places, to spread the risk and eliminate the possibility of losing it all through some awful mishap. 

Similarly for my extensive array of digital documents and spreadsheets, many of them financial and therefore very important. Those go back to the 1990s, and include my entire canon of Blog posts - effectively my detailed autobiography, written as I go along. (Who knows, future family members may find it interesting reading). 

I also have less important stuff, that is nevertheless the product of many years' accumulation - such as my mp3 music collection, and my digital Ordnance Survey mapping - all of which could be replaced, but at the cost of significant download time, and fresh expense. 

In short, I have digital assets, valuable to me, and well worth taking care of.

I can reduce all this to just a few figures. 

The General Backup now done included, in round figures, 500GB of data. That's 215,000 files in 9,000 folders. Most of the gigabytes, and most of the files and folders, related to my Photo Archive. 

When you consider that I've personally processed and captioned 99% of the Photo Archive, you can appreciate the enormous investment in time and effort, and why I have been so eager to devise and execute a backup system that will not only keep the Archive safe from harm, but allow swift and easy access whenever I want it. 

The careful and consistent captioning means that all of it is easily searchable. I can pull out, very rapidly, all the pictures I have of a particular locality, or a particular person, or those taken on a particular date, or (with cunning use of search words) most subjects that I've taken pictures of through the years. I think that's a lot better than asking some Digital Assistant to find me 'shots of waterfalls' or 'pictures of Mum' and hoping for the best. 

A few days back, I posted about buying a 2TB Samsung T5 external SSD. Intended only for General Backups, it cost £243. But I quickly decided that to fully update and streamline all my non-Cloud manual backup arrangements, I needed to replace my eleven-year-old external Hard Drives with a 1TB Samsung T5 external SSD as well. That cost an additional £128. 

So I've now spent a total of £371 on external SSD storage. On the other hand, this allows me to postpone replacing my existing laptop for years to come. I no longer need to worry about its hitherto rather inadequate 256GB of on-board storage. Eventually, of course, its processor will be too lacking in oomph to handle super-large photo files, but that won't happen until I finally retire the little Leica and buy something new in the camera department. 

It will be some years ahead, then, before I'll be forced to get another Microsoft Surface Book (currently it would be the Surface Book 3). The one I have, the original Surface Book - with good but basic specs, all I could afford at the time - cost me £1,599 in 2016. I could still replace it (with the basic Surface Book 3) for the same amount. But if wanting a Surface Book 3 with a reasonable memory hike to 512GB, and a desirable processor upgrade to Intel Core i7, the outlay would be a purse-pulverising £2,499. That kind of money would have wiped me out a year ago. It would still blast a big gaping hole in my savings. But as time goes on, that hole will seem less and less. Getting the SSDs, and extending the life of my existing laptop, has bought me time to pile more gold and jewels in the Melford cellars. And meanwhile, I'll have shelved spending £2,499 on new laptop.

Buying the new SSDs has naturally simplified my Backup Diagram, and made it more elegant. The revised diagram is just below, and the previous one below that for comparison.

Simplicity generally means that things work better. Certainly I'd rather follow the upper diagram! 

Some mean-spirited folk may assert that it was dissatisfaction with the clunky appearance of the old diagram - an obsession with neatness and attractive design, perhaps - that spurred me into buying another SSD. Let them sneer if they will. They are wrong. 

Finally, a few shots to show how small and neat the new SDDs are, both in my hand and when compared to the much-older Hard Drives. For instance, in a picture below, Hard Drive A is plugged into my laptop, with the 1TB SSD next to it. What a difference in size! (And weight)

One snag with the old Hard Drives is that they drew their power supply from the laptop, and so hogged both of its two USB-A ports. That's why I could never plug in some other device when using one of these Hard Drives. But now I can, as in the next shot, where, at last, after three years, the General Backup is in progress and the files on the 1TB SSD (right) are being transferred to the 2TB SSD (left). 

The laptop is acting merely as a connecting device with a screen, its own memory capacity not involved in the process. And that is why the size of its own memory is no longer a big issue. 

Here is a wider shot of the General Backup proceeding. Sobering to think that it shows my entire remaining 'computer equipment'. I once had an extensive collection of major components, peripherals and storage media. Now it's just a slim laptop, the two diminuitive SSDs, the little Flash Drive, and a carrying bag. Plus the big, old, bulky scanner from 2007 that will one day be discarded, once no more scanning is necessary.

Although I had faith in those new SSDs, I didn't know how quickly the General Backup would go. The last General Backup in January 2018, using one of the Hard Drives, took 6 hours 15 minutes, and covered 139,000 files in 4,800 folders. Surely, with two SSDs speaking to each other, and all connections using USB 3.0 or better, things should be swifter?

They were. The transfer proceeded at a rate of slightly less than 1% per minute. And it did not falter. I watched it from time to time, fingers crossed. How could as many as 215,000 files copy from one device to another without a hitch?

But it was all right. After only one hour, the job was 74% done:

At 1 hour and 21 minutes it was 99% done, and seconds away from 100%. Then it was all over, and I finally relaxed.

It hadn't stopped at any point to tell me that some file name was too long. Nor that I was attempting to transfer something without its properties. Both hitherto common reasons for backups going awry.

500GB - 215,000 files - backed up in eighty-one minutes. No doubt there were ways to do it even faster, but compared to my previous backup experiences, this was lightning fast!

I was almost looking forward to the next General Backup in August! 

And I have to say, I'm pleased to enjoy the continued company of my present laptop (Verity) for a long time ahead. She has served me so well.