CD/DVD or External HD

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ianbuckers
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Re: CD/DVD or External HD

Post by ianbuckers »

Lord Reith wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 10:40 pm
ianbuckers wrote: Mon Nov 29, 2021 5:06 pm
An SSD is not a good option for long-term storage.
Why is that? :o
Well you mention cold, moisture and mechanical failure. They ARE susceptible to these. On the other points you are correct.

This article I found online covers some, although not all, of the issues affecting long term storage use...

"The long-term viability of SSDs is less well-known, simply because they haven't been around long enough for any definitive studies to provide the answer.

A solid state drive doesn't contain the moving parts of a hard drive. The spinning platter (the disk), the arm and magnetic head are absent, and flash chips are used in their place.

This means an SSD is not vulnerable to head crash in the way that a hard disk is. The added durability gives the SSD an obvious reliability advantage, especially when it comes to shock or exposure to less than optimum environmental conditions. They're also not affected by magnets.

However, it should be remembered that the other components in an SSD are the same as those in a hard drive, and are no more or less likely to fail. SSDs are also EXTREMLY susceptible to power failure, leading to corruption of data or even the failure of the drive itself.

The lifespan of each memory block in an SSD is limited to a certain number of write cycles i.e. the number of times a piece of data can be stored to it.

The number of cycles will only be a few thousand on most drives. This sounds alarmingly low, but is not really an issue in modern SSDs. Unlike hard drives, which write their data to the earliest free block, an SSD uses technique called wear-levelling to ensure that each memory block is used before the cycle begins again at the first block.

Unless you're writing tens of gigabytes of data a day, every day for several years, you won't get close to the limit on write cycles. Even if you did, the memory would become read-only, so your data would still be accessible.

All this means that SSDs are a great choice for DAY-TO-DAY storage over HDDs, so long as performance is bigger priority than capacity, given the relatively higher price of a solid state drive.

An SSD is NOT a good option for long-term storage, though.

How long an SSD can store data without power depends on a number of factors including the number of write cycles that have been used, the type of flash memory used in the drive, the storage conditions and so on. A white paper produced by Dell in 2011 stated that it could be as little as three months to as much as 10 years."

But as you have pointed out on a later of your posts (hereon this thread) every available option CAN let you down. But you have to include vinyl when saying that...it is susceptible to wear, poor handling and temperature.
CultTVman
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Re: CD/DVD or External HD

Post by CultTVman »

To me, redundancy is key. I back up critical files to encrypted cloud storage, and have local hard drives for physical back up. The cloud has saved me when I've had laptop failures. Restoration is slow, but reliable. Hard drives have helped when trying to find misplaced or deleted material quickly. Easier access. If you are trying to back up a lot of material, a local server with built in redundancy is crucial. None of these options are particularly expensive.
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alphabeatles
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Re: CD/DVD or External HD

Post by alphabeatles »

Vinyl would be the closest thing to inscriptions in stone, but that doesn't help with images and documents, nor can it handle hi-res or multitrack musical data.

I am also reminded that in my workplace we have a few labs full of 2013 Mac Pro cylinders, and those SSDs are still viable after years of running 24/7 and the accompanying student abuse and occasional power failure...

Again, as with your investments, diversify ;-)

And if we close our eyes, we can hear much of this music in our heads, so there's that!
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Le petit prince
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Re: CD/DVD or External HD

Post by Le petit prince »

Nowadays a 4-bay NAS configured to RAID 6 as the storage (meaning I can compensate two HDs entirely failing without losing data). And a set of LTO tapes as a rotating backup. No "cloud" usage.
chrisp
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Re: CD/DVD or External HD

Post by chrisp »

Just wondering what app people use to pay the content on the external HD. My 2Tb external HD is plugged into my Sony TV. I started off using the Sony Video app on the TV to play the files but it was poor. I have now installed the VLC app on the TV and that works really well. Do others use VLC?
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