They still have value. The only thing you can’t do with them is a) boot an Apple Silicon Mac that has a SSD that is completely toast, and can’t be repaired using Apple Configurator, and b) make individual changes to system files.
But you can still boot to any macOS version or update level. For example, let’s say you apply Ventura 13.23.13 and it doesn’t work. You can boot externally to your last clone.
Or you upgrade to macOS Joshua Tree and it doesn’t work. You can boot externally to macOS Lake Tahoe.
Or you’ve make some catastrophic change to the data volume, such as it no longer recognizes your password. You can boot to the same OS version on your clone.
Or you’ve taken your Mac in for repair and Apple wiped the hard drive and upgraded it to macOS Redwood Forest. You can boot from your clone and restore it back.
Or, in the past while my main computer was out for repair, I booted my MacBook Pro using a clone of the iMac, so I had all of my files and data.
The issue with the signed sealed volume is that it takes ASR to clone the system volume, but that’s not my problem, it is something that the developers of Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! have to deal with – which they have. This is no different from the other steps that they had to take to create working, bootable clones before the SSV. It was more than just “copy the files” then, too.
I suggest reading the CCC documentation on bootable macOS clones found here before making a decision on whether to use bootable clones, especially on Apple Silicon.
In short, it appears to be a “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” kind of endeavor. Copying the SSV is not as straightforward (and maintainable) in Big Sur and later as it was for Catalina and earlier.
I have nothing at all against Samsung or the others recommended here, but I’ve bought lots of stuff from Other World Computing (OWC) (but not exclusively) for decades. Their stuff has always been good and reliable, their customer service (usually just answers to my questions) is good, and IMO their prices are quite reasonable.
I concur. For things like small pocketable drives for backing up photos on travel I get Samsung SSDs but pretty much everything else comes from OWC. I have a ThunderBay mini that’s running out of space so I’m soon to get the full size ThunderBay to replace it and downgrade the mini to backup duties.
My backup drives (all of which are still working) have always come from OWC. I’ve never had a problem with any of them. These are the OWC drives already in enclosures for plug-and-play usage. Just be sure it has the type of cable connection you want to use (USB-C, etc.).
All I know is there is (or was) an incompatibility that only was with this drive, and not with other OWC drives connected to the same computer.
For example, maybe there’s a problem with asr on Big Sur with this iMac where it doesn’t like Thunderbolt drives. This is my only TB drive.
Same for updates; maybe Big Sur didn’t have the right drivers for external Thunderbolt drives available when it is doing a software update reboot.
The software update problem may be fixed. I was able to upgrade this drive from Monterey to Ventura by booting from it and then applying the update. I haven’t tried an asr clone from it in Monterey or Ventura.
Note: I ran my iMac booted from this drive for 4 months, and besides the issues above, it worked great. It was way faster than the iMac’s internal Fusion Drive. Which is why I push back against the claims that you can’t boot from an external drive or that it doesn’t have value.
If you’re wondering why I ran booted externally for 4 months…
After I upgraded to Catalina, it said that the SSD component wasn’t SMART verified (although there were no other signs of failure).
That prevented upgrading to Big Sur – it would’t permit it.
My plan was to upgrade the external clone to Big Sur, then clone it back to the internal drive, because I didn’t believe the SMART errors.
I was able to upgrade the external drive to Big Sur, but then couldn’t clone it back due to the asr error.
So I was stuck. There was no way to get the internal drive up to Big Sur.
I got the drive repaired in April, and migrated back to it. Which was a challenge in itself, because I still couldn’t clone to it, among other issues.
I have a buss powered 2.5" spinner locally and iDrive.
The local carries all the most important docs only. Not bootable.
I’ve put T7s as the clients’ locals with iDrive.
Samsung T5 and T7 are good SSDs. Just check the model (T5, T7, T9), color and size options to see what price is best. You can use CamelCamelCamel to check if “sale” prices are really a sale price. Strangely enough, certain T5/T7 colors will drop in price while other colors stay high. It is very random.
If you are not in a rush, use the Camel tracker to set price drop alerts. For example, the T7 2TB was recently around $165-170 for a while before jumping up to $200. If you set Camel to alert you when the price drops to $180 (or less) you can keep tabs on it. Prices will come down periodically, especially around Nov-Dec.
(Tip for searching on Camel: copy just the 10-character “B” code from Amazon’s product URL. So for the T7 I linked above, you only need “B0874YJP92” to find it on Camel. Amazon search also uses these codes.)
Additionally, while some SSD makes and models may be “slower”, keep in mind the faster speeds only really kick in when transferring large files. When backing up a lot of small files, things slow down just like if you got exit the highway and take residential streets with stop signs at every intersection. Every file copied requires the storage device (HD or SSD) to open a new file, write data, and then close the file. The open/close actions slow things down a bit. Super fast models are more useful when working with large photos or videos, for example.
For TM and backups macOS is going to bottleneck your i/o so there’s no use in trying to get a speedy SSD. There’s also no real benefit to getting a TB4 enclosure over regular USB 3.2, at least none that would justify the $80 price differential.
Here’s a well rated $112 solution for 2TB simple enough any 5-year old could assemble it.
Since a solution like this is so inexpensive and simple, it’s worth buying it twice and using the second set to cover your last remaining vulnerabilities: disk failure/damage (rare but can happen nevertheless) and bugs (perhaps even rarer, but a big pain since often only discovered upon attempted recovery when it’s too late). Use a different backup strategy from TM to protect against the latter, like a SD or CCC clone of your disk every once in a while in addition to the primary TM backup. Ideally you’d store this 2nd drive at a different location from your primary (eg. work vs. home) so if one burns down, the other will still be around.
No disagreement on the general idea, but I would go with a well-known brand for the SSD, since there are many cheap devices sold by scammers, which may be made from used/worn-out parts or simply lie about actual capacity. I don’t know if the “Teamgroup” brand you cited is good or not, but I’d avoid it simply because I don’t know anything about the brand.
When I bought parts for a cheap SSD, I went to Micro Center (a local store that also has a web store) and bought an SSD made by Inland (one of their house brands). The one I chose was:
The current price for this is $110. It’s not the highest performance, but it has a rated endurance of 3,600 TBW, which is very high. I consider endurance to be more important than any other statistic (assuming everything else is acceptable, of course). Maybe I’m unnecessarily paranoid about hitting a device’s write-cycle limit, but that’s my opinion.
(Update: It looks like the above SSD is no longer available. Unfortunately, Micro Center doesn’t appear to sell a replacement model with similarly-rated endurance. I’m not sure why (maybe the original rating was incorrect?). The closest equivalent currently sold is: Inland Performance Plus 2TB 3D TLC NAND PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD - Micro Center, which costs $130 and has a rated endurance of 1,400 TBW.)
And FWIW, I put it in this enclosure: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08G14NBCS. The device isn’t the least expensive, and it gets pretty warm under heavy use, but it doesn’t get so hot that thermal throttling kicks in.
Every file copied requires the storage device (HD or SSD) to open a new file, write data, and then close the file. The open/close actions slow things down a bit. Super fast models are more useful when working with large photos or videos, for example.