Storage Solutions HDD or sata sdd for long term photo storage

mysticrainman

mysticrainman

Forerunner
I have a external HDD which serves as long term storage of family photos. while shifting, the connection port got slightly bent. Now when I connect it to the pc, sometimes it detects sometimes it doesn't.

I'm looking for an alternate source for long term storage. I'll most probably look at around 1 tb size.
  • Is a HDD or sata sdd a better vfm?
  • If it is a HDD, should a just go for a standard consumer variants like Seagate barracuda? Or something like wd purple?
  • Would you recommend buying one 2nd hand - especially considering it contains important data such as memories?
  • What checks should I do?
 
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I can't speak to specific brands, but I wanted to share my experience. I have an SSD with some non-important data that hadn’t been powered on for about a year and a half. When I turned it on last week to check the contents, I found that all the data was gone — the drive was completely unreadable, and even the partition table couldn’t be detected.
 
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  • Is a HDD or sata sdd a better vfm?
    - HDD are generally better value for money , make sure to get full sized 3.5 inch drives. HDD store data magnetically and can be "Cold stored" , ssd store as electrical charge , hence made to be accessed frequently and not long term cold storage.

  • If it is a HDD, should a just go for a standard consumer variants like Seagate barracuda? Or something like wd purple?
    - Go for WD , they are well know brand and have few tiers of quality available , depending on your budget and setup , you can also look into various RAID configuration and increase your copies and redundancy depending on how many drives you acquire , if its just 1x 1tb , maybe consider buying 2 and create backup of backup if data is that important.

  • Would you recommend buying one 2nd hand - especially considering it contains important data such as memories?
    - Depending on seller and condition of HDD , i would still not recommend buying 2nd hand as it might have various factors like shocks absorbed , high humid environment , shipping damage and dust damage and what not associated with it that might not show on digital benchmarks. Unless its a seal and unboxed one from well reputed reseller who actually knows how to handle i would not recommend.


  • What checks should I do?
    -You can ask for crystaldiskinfo for them , how many hours its used and physical condition etc , but again not recommend to buy 2nd hand for important memories.
 
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