Hard Drive reliability over the long term

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My PC is an older gaming rig i7 2700K etc. (mama has the new i9 gaming rig)

I have a conventional spinning WD 3TB back up drive (internal) that is now making a groaning sound (I only plug it in to load data) . So it really has very few hours of use, but it's many years old. Unfortunately, a recent transfer of pictures to that drive shows that about half the pics can't be read. (they are also on the C drive)

Three choices: (what's the most reliable? )

A conventional 4TB spinning drive, like a WD 7200 RPM "Gold"

A SATA SSD in a box, like a 2TB Samsung 860 QVO

An M.2 drive in an adapter, like a 2TB samsung 960/970 that way if I upgrade my computer I can simply install the M.2 on the future motherboard, or in a laptop.
 
upload pics to google photos. Unlimited storage at high quality (not 100% but still look fine). Hard drives, especially high capacity reliability is crap. I only have spinning drives to archive stuff I don't want to load from the web. All my computers could explode and I wouldn't lose a thing.
 
SSD would get my vote based on ease and price. M.2 if the price difference is not to extreme.

What I did on my old 3770 system was a ssd as boot/install drive and regular hard drive as a backup. So anything I never want to lose goes on both.
My new AMD 2700x system has a 1tb m.2 for boot and 512gb for backup/stoarge.

So 1tb SSD now and then if you upgrade get a M.2 as boot drive and use SSD as backup.
 
For my storage drive I have a WD Black, which is used as more of an internal backup now that I've upgraded our main drive to a 1TB Samsung Evo 860. The premium for an Evo over a QVO is so little that I didn't even consider the QVO.

I also like that Samsung offers very easy-to-use cloning software and Magician gives some useful utilities for assessing health, raising performance and updating firmware. That was worth the Samsung premium to me.
 
I was using a Samsung 8xx SSD for several years without any issues. Have an M.2 now. I'd think anything solid state is better than something with motors and plates spinning. I use a 1TB Adata M.2 for Windows and a 3TB Western Digital for storage. You definitely want an SSD for your boot drive.
 
Download Speedfan or CrystalDiskInfo. Check SMART values on HDD.
Creaking or screeching is a pretty clear sign it is circling the drain.
Backup as needed. I have a 2008 vintage 500GB Hitachi working fine, back in the times
sub 1% failure rates. 2 Samsungs of 2010 and 2011 vintage are long dead though.
Newest 1TB Seagate is fine with 3 years of daily use, but with a loud spin up click.
A minimum of 2 copies of critical data is a good policy.
 
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Originally Posted by Leo99
I'd think anything solid state is better than something with motors and plates spinning.


I thought so too, but I've had a number of SSD's fail suddenly. I have a small pile of them from various manufacturers. They often have a 3 year warranty. Where some spinning drives have a 5 year warranty.
 
Originally Posted by Cujet
Originally Posted by Leo99
I'd think anything solid state is better than something with motors and plates spinning.


I thought so too, but I've had a number of SSD's fail suddenly. I have a small pile of them from various manufacturers. They often have a 3 year warranty. Where some spinning drives have a 5 year warranty.


Depending on the drive you buy, Samsung can go 3, 5 or 10 years on their SSD. With hard drives, it's been true forever, it's not a matter of if it will fail, just a matter of when. Mechanical drives can only spin for so long. Same with SSD, only so many writes.
 
Originally Posted by Cujet
My PC is an older gaming rig i7 2700K etc. (mama has the new i9 gaming rig)

I have a conventional spinning WD 3TB back up drive (internal) that is now making a groaning sound (I only plug it in to load data) . So it really has very few hours of use, but it's many years old. Unfortunately, a recent transfer of pictures to that drive shows that about half the pics can't be read. (they are also on the C drive)

Three choices: (what's the most reliable? )

A conventional 4TB spinning drive, like a WD 7200 RPM "Gold"

A SATA SSD in a box, like a 2TB Samsung 860 QVO

An M.2 drive in an adapter, like a 2TB samsung 960/970 that way if I upgrade my computer I can simply install the M.2 on the future motherboard, or in a laptop.


You can try a program called Recuva to get those files back, it doesn't always work but I've used it on failing drives before and had good luck getting files back that were unrecoverable by other options.

I typically only use SSD for speed, not heavy storage. Although the prices have come down, spinning media is still cheaper for large amounts. I have around 12TB on my main home server PC, mostly for video storage but also backups and other files. I typically buy 2 of the same hard drives at a time, one is installed in the PC, the other I back everything up on it and then it goes in offline storage. I typically run through and backup again every 6 months. You could also setup a mirrored RAID if you don't want to spend the time to deal with offline storage of backups.

Reliability for HDD vs SSD is still hit or miss as far as I can tell. I've seen plenty of failed SSD drives along with HDDs, although failure of SSD seems to be immediate and usually unrecoverable, while HDD tends to be a slower death that gives you time to backup your files. The nice part with SSD is for laptops and portable drives, as if they get dropped it typically doesn't break them. I just had an older portable HDD that I accidentally dropped a few weeks back, immediately killed it. Yet when my laptop fell of a desk the other day, no issue other than a new mark on the edge of it.
 
When SSD's fail, your done, and data recovery is usually not an option especially when a NAND chip is the culprit. A controller or solder joint issue is just about the only repair a data center can do.

HDD's on the other hand, and only my experiance, will usually give some warning, and when they fail, a head swap or circuit board swap can usually be done by a mid level data recovery center.

As they are getting higher capacity, the failure rates will increase.

Personally like the WD RED and PURPLE and BLACK drives.
 
First of all, SATA and M.2 are both just SSD but with different interface. If you buy from a major brand they should be fine. Just buy the longest warranty one and backup your data regularly.

In terms of HDD, it also depends on the brand and model. I've had good luck with WD in the recent past so I tend to stick to them.

SSD data retention is not long (1 year power off at room temp), if I were to archive data I'd pick HDD (supposedly data retention is 5 years) and backup on a regular basis over multiple HDD.
 
Most reliable, the SSD. Longest shelf life for archiving, the WD Gold.

Originally Posted by Fordiesel69
As they are getting higher capacity, the failure rates will increase.


Not for SSDs. Generally the higher the capacity the higher the endurance and sometimes the faster the performance (benchmark-wise at least.)
 
I use a 500gb Samsung 860 EVO boot drive with 2 1 TB western digital black hard drives setup as RAID striped and a 2 TB western digital external drive that does a differential backup once a week of the entire system. The SSD is used for boot and programs with all data stored on the hard drives. Had 1 hard drive report it was failing, swapped in a new hard drive and rebuilt the data from the other hard drive, never even had to resort to the external drive.

SSD drives do fail and usually they are not recoverable. I had a 256gb EVO fail and it was done, no chance of recovery. I put the 500gb in and copied the latest backup from the external drive, resized the partition and was off and running in four hours. Last health report from the 250gb showed 9 TB written out of 100 TB before data loss would start occurring. Failed 3 months out of warranty.

I like western digital for hard drives and Samsung for SSD units. Stay away from LaCie externals, I have had one fail and some friends have had multiple LaCie units fail.

If you wanted to insure no data is lost, raid the main box and have one external doing an incremental or differential backup weekly and a separate external doing a full master backup once a month or after and new adds to the system and keep that one off site.

I at one time used a NAS box, but after one drive failed and had I hard time restoring the data, When that drive died, it corrupted some of the data and that copied over to the striped drive. Had to go back to the external master backup to restore some lost data.

For important or critical systems always make two backups.
 
I use a 500gb Samsung 860 EVO boot drive with 2 1 TB western digital black hard drives setup as RAID striped and a 2 TB western digital external drive that does a differential backup once a week of the entire system. The SSD is used for boot and programs with all data stored on the hard drives. Had 1 hard drive report it was failing, swapped in a new hard drive and rebuilt the data from the other hard drive, never even had to resort to the external drive.

SSD drives do fail and usually they are not recoverable. I had a 256gb EVO fail and it was done, no chance of recovery. I put the 500gb in and copied the latest backup from the external drive, resized the partition and was off and running in four hours. Last health report from the 250gb showed 9 TB written out of 100 TB before data loss could start occurring. Failed 3 months out of warranty.

I like western digital for hard drives and Samsung for SSD units. Stay away from LaCie externals, I have had one fail and some friends have had multiple LaCie units fail.

If you wanted to insure no data is lost, raid the main box and have one external doing an incremental or differential backup weekly and a separate external doing a full master backup once a month or after and new adds to the system and keep that one off site.

I at one time used a NAS box, but after one drive failed and had I hard time restoring the data, When that drive died, it corrupted some of the data and that copied over to the striped drive. Had to go back to the external master backup to restore some lost data.

For important or critical systems always make two backups.
 
Keeping the backup powered down for most of the time is beneficial so it does not get encrypted in a ransome ware attack. At the expense of a less automated backup.
 
Originally Posted by 03cvpi
...I like western digital for hard drives and Samsung for SSD units. Stay away from LaCie externals, I have had one fail and some friends have had multiple LaCie units fail....


I was recently shopping for an external hard drive on Amazon, and spent way too much time reading reviews. This is what I frequently read:

"Stay away from Seagate external hard drives, they are junk"

"Stay away from WD external hard drives, they are junk"

"Stay away from LaCie external hard drives, they are junk"

"Stay away from G-Drive external hard drives, they are junk"

"Stay away from Fantom hard drives, they are junk"

Every brand of external hard drive received 15%-20% 1-star reviews because of the drive being DOA or failing after a year in service or being excessively noisy.
 
How's this for long term?

[Linked Image]


I think it's getting to the end of its life but I can't complain. It's running PVR software 24/7 ... last reboot was in September. Power outage.
 
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