If your external drive is always plugged in, it isn’t a backup
If you’ve ever put too much trust in a storage device, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there. It doesn’t matter whether you buy a portable SSD, an NVMe drive built into your PC, or even a good old hard drive: the risk of data loss is always real and always slightly scary.
The problem is that many people still perform backups the wrong way or ignore the various failure points along the data chain. These are the major problems with many backups and how to fix them.
A single disk is never a backup
It’s better than nothing, and that’s it.
It’s easy to think that your files and photos are safe as long as you have a single portable drive to store them on, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, this goes against the (possibly outdated) backup rule of 3-2-1, and it’s never enough.
The sad truth is that if your files or photos only exist in one place, you don’t have a backup; you simply have a storage device that can fail at any time. Along with photos, most of us also save them to the cloud, often unintentionally, but files? It’s the wild west, and I know plenty of people who have a 10-year-old hard drive as the only thing standing between them and a data loss disaster.
Beyond simply trusting a single device too much, these “single disk” backup setups fail for reasons that often have nothing to do with the disk itself. An unfortunate disconnection during file transfers can lead to data corruption, especially on older devices.
The next problem is exposure. If your backup drive is still plugged in, it’s vulnerable to essentially the same things as your PC, from ransomware to power outages. If it doesn’t, it could die from inactivity and you won’t even know it until it’s too late.
Then there’s the file system. Unplugging your drive during transfers is one thing, but unplugging it during background writes is just as common, and you may not even see that the operating system is doing indexing work behind the scenes. If you use exFAT for compatibility, you’ll find that it’s less forgiving if the drive is removed or disconnects randomly mid-write. This can disrupt the entire file system, even if your files were intact moments ago.
External drives can fail in more ways than you think
And every option leads to disaster.
Monitoring the health of your SSD can help avoid disaster, but depending on the type of backup device you’re using, you might have a considerable task ahead. SSDs can fail even at 100% health, and the same can be said for other types of media, from hard drives to USB drives.
Aside from regular drive failures (which are more likely to happen if your drive has been used for years or, conversely, if it’s been forgotten in a drawer somewhere), there are other risks to consider.
Physical damage is important here, and this explains why it’s not a good idea to keep all your saves in one place. If you drop the drive, there’s a power surge, or your drive is taken for a bumpy ride in your backpack, it may not make it out alive.
Random disconnections can still cost you data even if the drive escapes unscathed. Even if this is not a breakdown in itself, they are still dangerous.
Portable hard drives can develop bad sectors, just like SSDs. Some of these issues may not kill the disk, but can still damage your backups.
The disk is not the only thing that can fail
It is far from being the only link in this chain.
The drive itself is just one part of a long list of technologies that all make up a backup solution. The complete chain includes your USB port, the cable, any hub or dock, the case’s USB bridge controller, and the file system. Failure anywhere in this direction still means your files could be in danger.
Cables are the easiest thing to neglect. A slightly loose plug or a cable rated below specification or intended only for charging can cause micro-disconnections during file transfers, damaging data integrity. Ports and hubs are also known here. Not only do they destroy your transfer speeds, but they can also interrupt data transfers, especially if you’re connecting through a hub rather than directly.
Enclosures can also add a layer of risk. Placing your SSD in an enclosure is a good solution if you have an older drive lying around, but cheap SATA to USB or NVMe to USB bridge chips can overheat or crash.
And even if everything else is perfect, a bad disconnection or power surge can corrupt the directory structure. It only takes one problem to lose all your files if you only have one backup.
Habits that are killing your backups
And how to do better.
There’s nothing wrong with backing up your photos or files to an external drive, but you should always consider it a real risk. It’s convenient to have a portable SSD always plugged into your PC, but it’s just an expansion of your existing storage instead of a proper backup.
This is the biggest habit that can backfire: treating your backup drive like a second internal drive. If it’s always connected, always writable, and you’re always moving and modifying files directly on it, you’re making it part of the same crash event as your computer… which means it can’t be a proper backup.
Many of us also tend to rely on cloud storage, expecting it to be enough. I’m definitely guilty of leaving my photos backed up on Google Drive and forgetting about it. But trusting a third-party service means you don’t have full control of what happens to your files, and without being alarmist, it’s always better to know you have something else to fall back on.
So how to solve this problem?
You can’t completely prevent drive failures, so treat each backup like the fallible device it really is. Never assume everything will be fine because it could crash at any time. (It probably won’t, but this is where you decide what’s more important: convenience or your files.)
Keep an offline backup drive as default. Don’t plug it in unless you have to, but check it once every few months to monitor its health. Keep a second backup, ideally in a different physical location. If you have an always-connected drive, don’t rely on it to protect your files.
Also adopt a quick routine that detects problems quickly. Once a month, choose a folder at random, copy it to another location and check that all files open and play correctly. Sometimes SSD health programs will tell you that the drive is working fine, but copy errors occur during transfers and will not be detected by the software.
