Apparently- from what I understand- the very best, most robust long-term data storage method in the world is... paper. Which unfortunately doesn't help us very much.

 

Hey mate, was 'up
It is very hard to brick a modern ssd, especially if you buy quality drives. You will have to either power it off for over a year or more, or exceed its rated life cycle. For instance, i have yet to see one Samsung drive fail and i have installed 60-70 of them the past 5 yrs.
Speaking about recent times, ssd controllers employ a plethora of automated functions that will prevent data from bricking. A major one is constantly allocating data to -considered- optimum cells for read and write purposes, so performance and ssd health are sustained while operating the drive.
Cheers

 

It's all about the Benjamins... I see 4TB SSDs now under $200 which is pretty amazing but it would still cost a lot to back up everything I've got. And now it looks like for not much more you can get a 20 TB mechanical drive. One drive like that would back up everything in the house pretty much.

 

Yup. I use two (a master and a safety) 6 TB SATA 3.5" HDD's for the longer term storage of machine backup images. Been using this system for going on 10 years now. Hasn't failed yet. Just make sure you use checksums for integrity checks to make certain the images you write to the archival medium are pristine. You should be using checksums for critical data written to ANY type of archival medium you use be it SSD, Optical, HDD, etc. Because all of them are subject to failure as none of them are perfect in any way shape or form.

 

do failure rates really matter? they're all low enough that they should be irrelevant if proper redundancy is in place

 

Well... Statistically they do. But the reality is a bit different. For instance, Seagate hdds are being accused by many individuals as reportedly having the highest failure rate like in ie. Backblaze's regular data reports. What these individuals don't take into account, is that Seagate drives are also the most used ones all over the industry, as they offer the best compromise between performance, endurance and price. My personal fav hdd is the Ironwolf Pro 16tb and in my tests i found it is a killer drive for NAS etc. I just wish i could afford 5-6 of them hehe.
Cheers

 

Old skool wax cylinder FTW

 

For me it's definitely SSD.
I've got like 10HDD's in my life and all of them failed at some point and everything was lost,
except the stuff I made backups from. Most case of issues was spontanious clicking of the writing head,
even if the HDD just was laying around. In 1 case the HDD's circuit board got fried when connecting it to a PC
and while the Disk was totally fine, I couldn't get any of my data until I bought an identical HDD to disassemble
it and use the board from that one in my fried HDD.

Since 7 years I'm going with SSD's only and not one of them failed till now.

 

You can use the failure rates as a semi-barometer of how good the storage medium is. That's about all they are useful for. For ANY given medium available to us mere mortals these days there are risks that come with each one. The key is mitigating the risk with common sense handling of the particular medium itself and the data you write to it. And yes, redundancy is a major plus in your favor. Your chances of success in the long run are ensured by orders of magnitude with each redundant device you employ.

Given that the storage device is in proper working order, the golden rules are;

1.) insure as best you can the integrity of the data you are writing to the medium
2.) monitor or check the data integrity after it is has been written.

As far as the rest of it goes it simply boils down to the quality or longevity of the device you are working with, and how comfortable you are storing your data on it. If you check around you'll find there are just as many horror stories about each available type of storage device. While one raves about their particular type of device, another will cite a failure scenario to compliment it.

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2025 at 12:19 AM

I agree

my point, that I probably was less clear about, was that with proper raid (etc), it matters less. especially when the majority of (non-end-of-lifetime) hdd failures are DOA that are less likely to cause data loss. buy whatever drives you can afford several of and make sure your data lives in more than one (hopefully fault tolerant) place

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2025 at 1:33 AM

Yeah, those are good drives. I've had real good luck of late with the X20/X22's etc (forgetting exactly in which amount or size), but obviously they are newer so... I'm just mad at myself for not getting a few late last summer and early fall, or like the Ironwolf's, to now look at them at a LOT more... (like I'm mad I didn't pick up more 4TB's at $140 or whatever they were around Black Friday 2023) oh well... just gotta wait it out, bite it and buy it, or seriously prune I suppose..

I guess the reason I have been buying so many drives over the last year was pretty much collating the boxes and boxes of old ones ranging in size from 1GB or less scsi drives lol to whatever in ssd's to hdd's in accordion size of different formats, and from samplers and older systems and tour drives and other backups and stuff I had put off for years...even old exabyte tapes, jazz/Zip drives, those 128mb opticals popular in the mid 90's etc.... but getting 18-20-22TB rectified enterprise drives from ServerPartDeals before they went up was a good price, and had just gotten a new system, and so more ssd's as could take more advantage and certain sales etc...

f, I got I think, let's see, I think 68TB online right now, and its just because I'm organizing and whatnot (half of that is obviously redundant as 1:1 backups) etc.. and yeah, it gets to be a lot, but a bunch of family archive stuff and decades of sessions etc... and I'm more then sure that another 1/3rd of that is probably redundant as well as folders within folders of something else backed up already, or can be tossed easily....).. but I'm not tossing family photo's/home movie archives or records I've done and whatever... and I just needed to try and get organized and had a little time....

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2025 at 1:47 AM

Shrines...the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine! Enjoy the joy!!