A reader has a question about SSD drives:
“An SSD drive has been suggested as a backup to my pc and, I need to learn about them. You mentioned that with an SSD drive, the defrag command on Windows 10 will wipe out storage blocks that aren’t being used. Could you explain what this means? It sounds like it eliminates available space.
I’m puzzled too, about using an SSD drive for the sole purpose of backup – as in pictures and C drive. Would it be necessary to have windows 10 installed on it?”
There’s really no difference to home users between using an SSD drive and any other external drive. The SSD drive is solid-state, like a plug-in flash drive. That means there’s no mechanical spinning drive like some PCs have.
You don’t add an operating system like Windows to a backup drive, it just works as another storage device.
SSD drives don’t become defragmented like mechanical drives. Mechanical drives actually spin and the computer writes the data on different parts of the disk. Defragmenting copies the data and writes it next to data that it’s related to, so the access is faster. Since SSD drives don’t move, it’s equally fast for your computer to access all information on it. The Defrag command just clears up unnecessary data.
Any auto backup software or the built in Windows backup would work with an SSD drive.