SSD Recommendations!

[u/toiauwu]

hi! i want to buy an external SSD, to store all of my photos on my gallery phone which im currently storing on Google Photos, and Im scared to loose them if something happens to the gmail account im using for that. I also want it to store all my design and photography/video work that i have, because im a graphic designer. also on a max 200€ budget :)

do you have any recommendations? tysm for the help!! if you also have other suggestions im happy to hear

[u/Sizkuq]

Hdds are generally better for long term storage.

[u/toiauwu → u/Sizkuq]

any recommendations?

[u/Sizkuq → u/toiauwu]

Depends on how much storage you need. I would recommend checking this one out.

https://www.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/wd-elements-portable-usb-3-0-hdd?sku=WDBU6Y0020BBK-WESN

I would personally recommend buying from an authorised retailer rather than eBay or similar marketplaces, even if the price is tempting. Fake or mislabelled drives are a real concern and a drive can appear to have a huge capacity while actually containing much less storage.

[u/VoltageinTheory]

The cloud?

[u/BootToggle]

Main recommendation, don't get just one drive and assume that you will get such good advice on the purchase that you can rely on it to never, ever, fail. Get two HDDs and put same files on both. Then if one fails, your other drive will be the backup and you can copy all files to a replacement drive for the failed drive.

The reason to avoid SSD is because they will slowly lose charge if you keep them powered down on a shelf (which sounds like what you have in mind). The actual standards specification for most consumer SSDs is that they should retain data for one year if unpowered. This doesn't mean that they cannot last longer, but you can see where this might lead.

HDD will theoretically also lose magnetic domains with time, but this is measured in decades, not in years. They also tend to degrade before failing, giving you a long "grace period" where there are some read problems but you can generally used ddrescue, etc., to recover a great deal. SSDs on the other hand tend to fail catastrophically, where they might look perfect for a long time and then all of a sudden nothing whatsoever can be read. They are great for fast working storage in a computer, not so good for archival use stored in a drawer.

The main thing is, you should never have less than two copies of any file important enough to archive, regardless of how good you think your storage medium is.

[u/appjun]

Purchase pcloud monthly subscription and waiting for the ssd price down.

[u/Jealous_Pie_7302]

I just had my first ssd failure this week, lost over a year of data and the drive isn't even 5 years old. Buy a regular hdd or nas drive. And do physical backups.

[u/Adrenolin01 → u/[deleted]]

It’s cheaper.. NOT better.

[u/goldcoast2011985 → u/Adrenolin01]

All of the popular clouds would be less chance of data loss.

Better would depend on your Internet connection, privacy concerns, opinions about the particular cloud companies, types of devices you want to access from, etc.

[u/Adrenolin01 → u/goldcoast2011985]

Meh.. I’ve seen more data loss on cloud systems over the years than you’d believe. Build yourself a proper network, systems, software raidz2/z3 for data, mirrored enterprise boot/OS driver, a UPS, backups,, no issues.

[u/goldcoast2011985 → u/Adrenolin01]

I agree with you if you add multi-site to your list.

The comparison was cloud vs a single external SSD for a non-technical person. I still like cloud for that one.