I have several portables externals hard drives to save important information and data (since photographs to films in Blu-ray). I was thinking about the possibility of buying a new one, but the popularity of SSD disks make me doubt.

The most important purposes that a external disk must achieve to me, are:

  1. Not needed to be conected to electricity.

  2. Huge capacity.

  3. Big lifespan.

I tried to investigate this topic, but i don’t find any conclusions. So in the end of 2023… Which is the best option to a lifespan external disk? SDD? Or HDD?

Thanks in advance!

  • morningcupoftea@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I use a mix of HDDs and SSDs at home. They’ve got pros and cons that orient them for different use cases. For long-term, high capacity, cold storage HDDs win.

    SSDs win in pure performance (read/write speeds), and SSD tech continues to improve. However, compared to traditional HDDs they’re more expensive ($/TB), fail abruptly more often (i.e. become irrecoverably broken without warning), and have strictly finite IO cycles (read up on TRIM and “wear leveling” if you’re interested in the technical bits).

    Here’s a Backblaze article comparing SSDs and HDDs. It’s not intended to be comprehensive, just an overview of what to look out for.

    SSDs are appropriate for internal drives where you need fast access speeds or portable drives that you take with you on travel and actively use frequently. If you want a more cost-effective, stable, and long-term solution I’d generally recommend HDDs unless your use case REALLY needs SSDs for some reason (like if you live on a locomotive and are constantly bumping and jostling, SSDs aren’t gonna head crash lol).