My backup drive failed last night. I was struggling with a few VM issues and when I finally resolved a few, I went to back up the VM in case I had more. I plugged the external, 2.5” SSD into my laptop and got nothing. No response, no new drive in Explorer.

That’s not what I want to see, though I’m glad it was a backup drive, and not one I needed for presenting. Not much I could do at night, on the road, but in the morning I resolved to get a new one.

I did have a California geek moment, heading to Fry’s for the first time to replace my drive. I’ve read about, and heard about the store for years. I’ve passed them in Northern California, but never gone in.

It was a bit of a mistake, since I was late getting back to our Red Gate event. I got a little entranced with the various displays and options in there. It’s like a Best Buy++, combined with a Radio Shack and more. Microcenter in Denver is similar, but Fry’s has more.

I decided to go mSata rather than a 2.5” one, mostly for space and weight. It’s amazing to me how small things have gotten. I got the Samsung 840EVO 500GB drive and a small case.

I carry a screwdriver, but the case came with a tiny one that I used to mount the mSata drive. How small is this? Small.

The picture above shows my hand, a 16.9 oz water bottle, my Arc mouse, and the 500GB mSata drive in an enclosure.

500GB!

I could probably carry 4TB worth of these one hand. For $249 for the drive and $20 for the case, it’s amazing. I’ve got a nice backup for multiple copies of my VMs, which is very handy and cost effective.

If you haven’t tried mSata, take a look. I’m not sure I’d look at any other formats for portable storage.