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points by markstos 2 days ago | 0 comments

My son's M1 Air CPU died suddenly. Maybe it was a thermal death from overheating. Not sure. But all the data on it was lost because the storage is soldered on. PSA to make sure devices with non-removable storage are backed up!

(We replaced it with a Framework... with removable storage.)

[–] katbyte 2 days ago

you should be backing up all devices with removable storage or not, SSDs can also die without warning.

[–] ankurdhama 1 day ago

Sure, but in this case your cpu dies or ram dies or ssd dies, in all cases you loose data, in an upgradable system you loose data when ssd dies. Different risk factors.

[–] dahcryn 1 day ago

that's just a false sense of security. A machine should be treated as a whole. Separate components only matter economically, not for data security.

My macbook updates my documents etc to my NAS, and the NAS syncs to crucial folders to the cloud (not everything for cost reasons)

You should always assume your device can be stolen, you can spill fluids on it (or a guest), a cat can pee on it, an electric shock may kill it... No matter how great care you take of it, shit happens, data needs to be safe.

The SSD dying standalone vs the system dying doesn't change at all for data security. It's not a different risk factor

[–] fizzynut 1 day ago

It's the same "risk" but a completely different probability for anyone technical because any minor failure is now a critical failure.

I wouldn't choose to buy a car I use every day that's 100x less reliable than a normal car.

[–] katbyte 1 day ago

Hard drives failing is a far more common problem in my experience. As is theft and loss - one should always treat a laptop as if it will fail at any moment and keep good backups.

If your looking for arguments against soldered storage the facts ssds are wear items and will eventually need replacement is a much better one.

[–] fizzynut 1 day ago

If almost ANY failure means the laptop is basically bricked then even with good backups it means days or weeks before being back up to speed, having a working laptop with recovered data, esp. when working on highly confidential data as agreements can mean you cannot upload the data to a cloud.

If given a choice, I prefer a system where a HDD/RAM/GPU/CPU/PSU/Screen/Port/Battery/Keyboard failure is barely if at all disruptive to one where all of these effectively brick the system.

[–] hulitu 18 hours ago

> A machine should be treated as a whole.

... single point of failure. /s

[–] katbyte 1 day ago

SSDs are a more common failure point, as is theft or loss or damage.

The point is it shouldn’t matter if the cpu or ssd dies because you have backed up everything already and are prepared for anything to fail or happen to the device rather then “oh the ssd is removable so in these select few situations I can recover my data”

[–] tynorf 2 days ago

> PSA to make sure devices with non-removable storage are backed up!

Really this should be devices full stop. Also, "backed up" should include no fewer than two backups on different media and in different physical locations e.g. Time Machine to an external SSD _plus_ continuous cloud backup.

[–] y1n0 2 days ago

The more you people keep harping on this ultra robust backup strategy, the fewer everyday average people are actually even going to attempt a backup.

[–] andruby 2 days ago

1/ You're on HN, the audience isn't "everyday average people"

2/ This is like complaining that climate activists were harping too much 30 years ago, and that's why nobody listened

[–] znpy 2 days ago

> 2/ This is like complaining that climate activists were harping too much 30 years ago, and that's why nobody listened

this is a serious issue though.

if you harp too much about something, it becomes background noise. people get desensitized.

if you harp about too many things, it fatigues people as well (ever heard of "alert fatigue"?).

so yeah, harping too much, too loudly about too many things is a serious and the society should really start looking into this

(edit: i am aware of the irony of harping about harping)

[–] andruby 2 days ago

What would have been the right amount of harping about the environment though? Or is it always going to be a pointless exercise trying to convince/alert people?

Or is the only way to do that successfully, doing it subconsciously/covertly like the state actors are swaying public opinion? :-/

[–] podocarp 1 day ago

Unfortunately I think the sweet spot is to say it once or twice, go away, and then come back later with "I told you so"

No pain no gain also goes the other way, many times people don't learn until they get slapped in the face.

[–] lossyalgo 1 day ago

> "I told you so"

That'll be fun when half the world is migrating due to extreme climate events.

[–] y1n0 2 days ago

It's getting more average every day. QED.

[–] jasonvorhe 1 day ago

1. And yet we have someone on HN reminding everyone to even have a backup in the first place so let's not assume everyone on HN can't also make "average people mistakes".

2. You mean the climate activists who used to risk their lives back in the 80s on open oceans instead of gluing themselves to streets? Yeah, the times have changed.

[–] tynorf 1 day ago

While I was expressing an ideal setup, it isn’t all or nothing. A single backup is still better than none at all.

I suppose I didn’t specify exactly what I would recommend to someone who thinks it’s too hard, so here is that:

1. Install Backblaze. This is basically fire and forget. 2. (1) is enough for most people, but if interested (and on a Mac, which is what I’m familiar with), plug in an external SSD once a week or so for Time Machine. Setup involves clicking on the drive in the setup wizard and specifying an encryption password.

I don’t know about “ultra” robust, but this gives you protection from accidental deletions, natural disasters happening to your computer, hardware failures, and corruption from software bugs. The ongoing maintenance is plugging in a hard drive once a week.

If that is too much effort, just (1) provides natural disaster and hardware failure protection. It helps somewhat with the others but Backblaze only saves versions for 60 days and that’s a tight window to notice subtle corruption of e.g. your photos.

[–] dsego 1 day ago

I agree, if it has too much friction it's more likely you will postpone it. Any option, either just a cloud backup tool or a spare HDD or SSD with CCC or TimeMachine is better than nothing. And you have to plan for the most likely case, e.g. spilling beer on the laptop vs the house burning down.

[–] reeredfdfdf 1 day ago

For the house burning scenario, a cheap strategy is having one or two old HDD's in USB cases, located somewhere away from your house, in a place you regularly visit and trust security-wise. Then you can just make a habit of dumping the files there whenever visiting. Most important data of mine is safe even if internet goes down and somebody nukes the city I live in, for zero recurring cost.

[–] pdntspa 1 day ago

if you want to talk about 'average people' go hang out on reddit. How many times have 'average people' been brought up here explicitly to shut down a discussion. It is reductive and insulting

how many good things have 'average people' (and the avaricious wanterpreneurs chasing their dollars) ruined? Nearly everything!

[–] SoftTalker 2 days ago

And restore tested.

[–] smnplk 1 day ago

Even if the storage is soldered on the data can still be saved if it's not the storage that died and even then, it could be possible to retireve at least part of the data. Get a data recovery specialist.

[–] vjvjvjvjghv 1 day ago

That’s pretty expensive though.

[–] Schiendelman 2 days ago

Isn't icloud backup on by default??

[–] watersb 2 days ago

I'm not aware of any control over what gets backed up.

I'm assuming that all of my local work would be lost. But I'd still have the sixteen million duplicate photos.

iCloud's priorities are not a great fit for preserving my source code repos. Fortunately those aren't very big.

But when my son's Mac dies, his huge Logic Pro projects are toast. And he is a few thousand miles away now.

[–] martheen 2 days ago

In Windows, by default, Microsoft tools put projects in ~/source/repos, which OneDrive, in turn, by default won't touch so they'll be lost if the SSD fail and they're not in git.

However, OneDrive doesn't seem to even know how to handle source files (it doesn't even attempt to honor the gitignore), so rebuilding a project in folders covered by OneDrive results in flurries of temporary files being uploaded/updated to the cloud, hogging the bandwidth, with a bonus of locking files, crashing builds, or even reverting changes silently.

One would think backup tools, even if primarily for normal users are still literally made by programmers, at least consider the use case of programmers instead of just ignoring them entirely.

[–] ihateolives 2 days ago

OneDrive, Dropbox etc are not backup tools, they're file sync tools. This really should be common knowledge.

[–] KPGv2 1 day ago

i'm so tired of seeing this discouraging crap - "that's not a backup, LOSER"

file sync is backup against the things most people have to deal with (hardware breaking, theft, house fire, residential lightning strike)

[–] BSDobelix 1 day ago

>file sync is backup against the things most people have to deal with

I would say accidentally deleting a file is more common than a house fire, so NO, file-sync is not a backup nor is RAID (block-sync) or clustering (data/state-sync).

A backup is/should be a non-modifiable snapshot of data/files maybe even a state.

I give you an example:

You have a password-safe (as a file). Your computer blows up, but you are safe, because your password-safe is synced on Dropbox....but oh my god what was the password to Dropbox??? Your restore is gone because you forgot to "backup" your password-safe.

However you are not a Loser, being a Admin is a ~lost art and a really good paid one (again).... ;)

[–] KPGv2 1 day ago

> I would say accidentally deleting a file

It goes to your trash can/recycle bin for a while. That's literally what it's for: to guard against accidental deletes. Very few people accidentally delete files from their computer's drive anymore. The only time people do this in 2026 is accidentally formatting an SD card that had their camera's pictures on it or something.

[–] Schiendelman 1 day ago

I guess I'm not tracking. I put all my source folders in my Documents folder on the Mac, and check the checkbox to have that sync to iCloud. It works quite well.

I also do a bunch of video work with Da Vinci Resolve, and those project files are in the same folder. I don't keep the clips there, those are on an external disc, but that's just because I haven't gone from the two terabyte iCloud plan to the six terabyte plan.

[–] simonh 2 days ago

Kind of, but without a sub you only get a trivial amount of storage.

[–] Schiendelman 1 day ago

Sure, if there's anything worth subscribing to, it's that first $1 a month for your critical files.

[–] kalleboo 2 days ago

There is no iCloud Backup for Macs, only iOS devices.

There is iCloud Drive sync, but that only syncs your Documents and Desktop folders, but any other files are not synced.

[–] frxx 2 days ago

Surprising somehow, to me. One would imagine Apple could make a good amount of money by selling storage and thoughts-off safety for normies? And catch up to what Google offered like then years ago already with ChromeOS.

[–] kalleboo 1 day ago

Yeah I've always thought it was weird, especially after they cancelled the Time Capsule, leaving no official Apple product to back up your Mac. I figured it was because the max iCloud plan was 2 TB and Apple sold Macs bigger than that, but then they increased the iCloud plans and still didn't do it...

[–] paulschreiber 2 days ago

iCloud will sync your contacts, Notes, Keychains, and other data on macOS.

[–] samatman 2 days ago

This is a not-very-large subset of the ways you can permanently lose data which exists in only one copy. Have a Time Machine. No step two.

> We replaced it with a Framework... with removable storage.

Cool. How are you backing it up?

[–] dzhiurgis 2 days ago

Can't a decent shop desolder it tho?

[–] tarsierscripter 2 days ago

All the data is encrypted and the key is held inside the secure enclave within the CPU. If the CPU fails then the data is unrecoverable.

[–] judge2020 2 days ago

That's a big ask. Probably only work the few hundred it'd take to do that, then get the data off it, if you had some super important documents // crypto wallet.

[–] dzhiurgis 2 days ago

Is it really? In China you can upgrade your iPhone storage this way. Sure it's not for your average phone case store, but it's not exactly rocket science either.

[–] ariwilson 2 days ago

Unfortunately not really a lot of places to do this in the US. And unlike shipping new devices from China to US, shipping used devices from US to China and back is prohibitively expensive.

[–] bdavbdav 2 days ago

Key is held on a separate chip unfortunately

[–] dwaite 2 days ago

encrypted by both a boot password and a secure enclave held key

[–] Eueudhsbsj32 2 days ago

Are you suggesting that both keys should be required for decryption?

How would you restore the backup if your secure hardware device is lost/stolen/damaged?

[–] vel0city 2 days ago

The backup would live someplace other than on the broken machine. It would be encrypted some other way (or maybe not at all, depending on threat profile).

No point in encrypting those family photos burned to disc.

[–] pmontra 2 days ago

And the owners of the computer can't get the key in the secure enclave? Are they part of the threat model?

[–] rafram 2 days ago

“Some person with physical access to the computer” absolutely is part of the threat model.

[–] pmontra 2 days ago

Some person, yes. The owner, no.

[–] JoshTriplett 2 days ago

The standard way you distinguish "adversary with physical possession" from "owner" is "do they have the owner's passphrase".

[–] pmontra 1 day ago

I am not familiar with Macs so I might have been wrong from the very start, but if the owner put the key in the secure enclave then the same user should have no problem at putting the same key in the secure enclave of another Mac. If the user can't write into the secure enclave, then the Mac is protecting the data against the very same user that is supposed to own those data. It is protecting against wrench attacks too but what's the most frequent scenario?

[–] xenator 2 days ago

How removable storage will protect you from burned down laptop? Do you plan to keep SSD in your pocket while you are sleeping?

[–] swiftcoder 2 days ago

The removable storage will presumably not be encrypted the way the soldered storage is

[–] rytis 1 day ago

what does that even mean? why would encryption depend on how storage is attached (soldered or plugged in)?

[–] swiftcoder 1 day ago

It's unrelated to the physical connection, but the drive encryption used on the built-in drive keeps its keys in the CPU's secure enclave, so dead CPU == data lost, regardless of whether the ssd itself is damaged.

Obviously if you used the same encryption scheme on a removable drive you'd hit the same issue - but most people don't do that, because storing the encryption keys in the Secure Enclave makes your drive effectively no longer removable.