So I have two external drives – a 2TB drive and a 1TB drive. Granted, I could combine the contents of both into the 2TB drive and still have space to spare if I exclude the movies, software, and music folders 🙂

I have always thought I should have a backup of the content of these drives in case they fail. I also have personal and work related files in the drives. For example I have got documents and emails from my Vmobile/Econet/Zain/Airtel days (2005-2009), NetApp (2009-2013), and CommVault (2013-2016), Oracle (2018-2022).

There are other files related to work, immigration, VISA applications, videos (e.g., my Dad’s burial), photos (lots of them spanning more than a decade!). I have also got files related to my Masters degree and the school I got it from.

Anyways, I decided I should have a backup of these external drives.

I recently got a couple of 2TB USB sticks from Aliexpress as well as Temu (not sure which of the two company the one referenced here came from). But they are going for under $6 each at both places.

I consecutively hooked up both my external drives (2TB and 1TB) to a Windows laptop and copied their contents to the single 2TB USB stick I got from Temu/Aliexpress. Copying took over 24 hours but it is not like I was under a time constraint so doesn’t matter too much.

Granted, both larger drives are much faster than the tiny 2TB USB stick but I suspect that is likely due to the quality of the media in the stick (hey it is going for $5!).

But at least now I have my data duplicated in two devices so even if one of the larger drives die, I have a copy of its content in the tiny USB stick (albeit will be slow to access)

Below I tested the read/write speeds of the 2TB USB stick as well as a 1TB NVMe drive using the AmorphouseDiskMark utility on an M1 Macbook. I had the NVMe drive connected to a Anker hub which was in turn connected to a HyperDrive hub that was then connected to a M1 Macbook. NVMe drive is maybe 20 times as fast as the 2TB USB disk.
The two external drives above (Transacend and Intenso) will also likely be orders of magnitude faster than the 2TB USB disk.

“Lenovo” 2TB USB stick (test):

Solidigm P41 Plus 1TB NVMe SSD (test):

List of compute devices referenced in this blog entry:

• Anker PowerExpand 6-in-1 USB-C PD Ethernet Hub – docking station – USB-C – HDMI – 1GbE (Currently $25 from Walmart)
• Orico M.2 NVME and SATA SSD Enclosure USB 3.2 Gen 2 Protocols 10Gbps NVMe, 5Gbps SATA PCIe M-Key Built-in Metal Heat Sink with C to A/C 2-in-1 Cable (Newegg $15)
• Solidigm P41 Plus 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPFKNU010TZX1 (Newgg $100)
• HyperDrive Dual 4K HDMI 10-in-1 USB-C Hub For M1, M2, and M3 MacBooks ($200 from Amazon or HyperShop)