^ Thanks. That's very good info to know. My only issue with the lack of an optical drive is that some of the textbooks and ancillary lecture and testing materials I'm asked to evaluate are only available on CDs/DVDs. So I may have to buy one of the things anyway for home use.

 

When I got my MBA I bought the optical drive just in case. I have used it several time to install software but I don't take it with me all of the time.

 

A few years ago I was invited to a seminar conducted by Kingston Technology. The seminar involved SSD drives but also touched on flash drives. According to them flash drives do fail and they do "wear out". However, they do last a long time and are, in general quite reliable.

I have heard of flash drives failing, but I, fortunately, have never had a flash drive fail. So long as you back up your data to more than one location, you should have absolutely nothing to worry about.

One tip, do not defrag an SSD or Flashdrive. This will slow them down, and cause them to fail prematurely.

I have a portable optical drive but I don't think I've taken it out of the box in the last year. I also have a few portable hard drives. I used to use them a lot, but lately I hardly use them. I've come to rely upon flash drives.

I recommend to my clients that they buy three 32 gig flash drives and back up their data every few days rotating the drives. At any given time they have three backups spaced three or four days apart. If a drive should fail, they are no further than 8 days away from the most recent files. Also, if a file should become corrupted the simply have to go back to the prior backup to get a corruption free file. The chances of more than one flash drive failing at any given time is very small. So far neither I or my clients have had any problems.

 

You can share the optical drive on the Pro and mount it on the Air.

I've read some good things about the newest version of Time Capsule. It supports the AC Wi-Fi standard, which I think the Air supports also. You could store your items on the Time Capsule and take USB drives for temporary use.

 

Once I have the MBA (with the AC standard) in hand, my MPB is going to my oldest daughter. She's following in her father's footsteps and taking up studies in Marine Biology this fall.
I think the Time Capsule is a great idea, though. Even if I end up working for another year or so, the TC would still be excellent for storing all my pron. I'll need something to do with myself if I retire.

 

Very good to know, thanks Rob. I was totally unaware of this issue, and it never came up in any of the research I did before buying the MacBook Air.
Is there anything to be done to a SSD in the way of periodic maintenance to keep it from becoming cluttered with junk files that tend to accumulate over time?

 

I've also never had a thumb drive fail. I've sent some of them through the wash multiple times, and always have mine in my bag for items that I may need at work, or home or at an event that I'm involved with.

I find that the longevity of the device is tied more to the MTBF (mean time between Forgetting where the hell I put it) and not a traditional MTBF (mean time between Failure).

I do back up the drive periodically, but probably not frequent enough. Depending on the amount of data, any backup/synch technology would make sense, including a cloud based solution.

 

I have had USB thumb drives fail. In fact I had two fail last week. They were right out of the package.

Now I did make the mistake of not buying brand name (Lexar, Sandisk, etc) but I needed them in a hurry. That did me a lot of good!

I have broken a number of the thumb drives while in my various laptops by bumping the drive or dropping the computer but everytime I was able to disect the drive and get it working long enough to get the data off.

I recommend that you shouldn't put anything on them that you can't afford to lose. By backing them up regularly and replacing them regularly you should be fine but you never know.