Relability question SSD or HDD?

[slipperymongoose]

Hey all Im looking for a new hard drive to save all my music and precious photos etc plus a file dump for my vlogs and movie projects etc. I wanna know what kind of drive is more realiable HDD or SSD? I already know about the speed and data transfer rates etc etc and I know that SSD whips HDD butt in terms of that but I'm hearing a lot of conflicting info so wondering if anyone here knows. Cheers.

[Malfruen]

I have an SSD and about...6? Yep, 6... normal HDD's in my rig. SSD is WAY better for speed, as you pointed out, and it's better for video editing as well. The flip side is that they are quite expensive compared to normal drives, and they DO have a limited lifespan. That lifespan, however, is some ridiculous number of read/write cycles that you will probably never see.

I'd say, from my experience, get 2 normal drives, one internal, one external, and put a copy of whats important on BOTH. Then if one drive dies (It can happen. I had a 750GB drive die on me after having it for 2 years. I had a 3TB drive die after 2 weeks. I have yet to see an SSD die personally, but I know it happens), you have a complete backup of what you had before. It's more expensive, but if what you have is REALLY important, you can't really be too careful. Not to mention it's cheaper than the alternatives. A platter swap for a HDD to recover data can run you upwards of $1000, while a 2TB EXT-HDD is about $100. Some external drives will come with free backup software, so you can set that to backup once a week or once every couple of days.

All electronics technologies are probably as bad or good reliability wise as the other. You just have to be smart about how you prepare for the worst possible outcome.

[adidasguy]

Whichever you use, you want 2 backups for important stuff.
Any backup can fail.
One might be get a terabyte HD for $100 or so as a primary backup.
Then buy a box of 32 or 64 gig memory sticks. Use them as a secondary backup.
Spreading data across many devices insures that if a device fails, you won't lose everything.
Don't forget about the CD or DVD for another copy of important data.

[Kijona]

SSDs have a limited number of write cycles. They're expensive per MB versus the old-tech platter type. With that being said, they're less prone to failure and have a higher MTBF (mean time between failure). They're also more resistant to shock and damage from being banged around. However, they're also more sensitive to things like voltage surges, static, and moisture.

For pure backup purposes I'd suggest you buy two 500GB or 1TB drives and put everything you need on both of them - redundant copies. Then simply remove them from the computer and store them in the anti-static bag they came with and a bit of the anti-moisture stuff. Since HDD's are hermetically sealed, it could literally sit for YEARS and YEARS providing it doesn't get submersed in water. Even still, providing the platters aren't damaged, all of the data can be recovered quite easily.

For real-time backup you could just switch between the drives, that way if you lose one, you still have the other.

[Kijona]

I think something like this would be quite useful to you: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812119152

Just a thing to note...you shouldn't let HDDs run without any cooling for any extended length of time. Plug it in, save it, and then unplug it.

For new drives you may or may not have to format/partition them from the computer in order to use them as USB.

[slipperymongoose]

But if a hard disc drive sits for too long without use don't the bearings go bad and the drive shits itself. I'm leaning toward an external plus DVDs

[Kiwingenuity]

SSDs have a limited number of write cycles. They're expensive per MB versus the old-tech platter type. With that being said, they're less prone to failure and have a higher MTBF (mean time between failure). They're also more resistant to shock and damage from being banged around. However, they're also more sensitive to things like voltage surges, static, and moisture.

+1 to Kijona
SSDs do fail (especially if you get a surprise firmware update) - and so do memory sticks (known to fail after 3 years if not used) and written media such as DVDs (fungus eats them).  My brother works for a large data provider and they have numerous instances where this has been found to be the case. 

I run a pair of matched 500Gb SATA drives in Raid 1 (mirrored) using a generic RAID controller, and it would be a simple operation to rebuild if a drive pegs it.  You just have to make a good habit of carrying data forward onto new interfaces for the hard drives, although they don't change often.

If you have a quality PSU in your system, or even just unplugging and storing the drives in a nice cool place you should have no issues with a mechanical HDD.  I have some MFM drives here which are over 25 years old and they still spin up fine, every issue I have encountered with mechanical drives has been poor power supply or heat related. 

The ultimate backup option of course is tape - I have some LTO 1 tapes here which are ancient but still work, but you have to be wary that the drives only have 2 or 3 generation backward compatibility. They also are far more expensive than a HDD, and have the same storage requirements.

[adidasguy]

I had 2 RAIDs go out. Both lost their boot tracks making the whole idea of RAID worthless. RAID works if a track goes out on one of the drives, but when the boot goes out the drives are junk.

I just keep multiple copies of everything. Portable drives. Home computer. Office computer. If one location gets hit with a meteor, data is in the other location (or a portable in my backpack).

Tape is now very ancient. I don't know if you can still get much tape. Anyway, when I did have dome cart. drives, they never did work well and took forever to use. Never was able to get any data back off of them.

CD's and DVD's are pretty reloable. When I make one, I make 3 copies in case would should get damaged. I have some early CD's that are 25 years old and still work.

As for mechanical drives, they can last a long time. Some are 30 years old. Still work. Early USB interface. Right about the only thing that goes bad is the power supply. Their cheap external switching supplies have limited life spam. Capacitors dry out and they die.

The best back up of critical data is multiple formats and stored in multiple locations. Heck, buy yourself a case of 64 gig thumb drives and scatter them all over your world. Those are super cheap.

[slipperymongoose]

I'm trying to sign up for Dropbox, ill dump it there plus a small external plus DVD and that should give me a nice spread

[weedahoe]

I built a new machine  a few months back and bought two 3Tb drives and set in raid. I do have a SSD 160gb in the machine that is in my truck because I needed faster boot up times

[john]

I built 50 machines about 5 months ago.  Of them 6 had standard HDD's and the others I installed SSD's.  Already one machine with a regular HDD failed.  None of the SDD machines have failed.

[Kijona]

I built 50 machines about 5 months ago.  Of them 6 had standard HDD's and the others I installed SSD's.  Already one machine with a regular HDD failed.  None of the SDD machines have failed.

Such is the nature of mechanical hardware.

[Kijona]

But if a hard disc drive sits for too long without use don't the bearings go bad and the drive shits itself. I'm leaning toward an external plus DVDs

News to me. I've never taken a HDD bearing apart but I would assume it's a sealed bearing. What makes it any different from the bearings in anything else mechanical? Old motorcycle wheel bearings don't fuse as far as I know, and they're packed not sealed.

[slipperymongoose]

Leave any bearings sit long enough and they will have some sign of failure, just depends of weather they are high or low speed bearings as to what you do about replacing them.

[Kijona]

Leave any bearings sit long enough and they will have some sign of failure, just depends of weather they are high or low speed bearings as to what you do about replacing them.

I don't know man. I've got an HDD from 1995 that's been sitting all this time and I just plugged it in to see if it still works. No problem.

[Malfruen]

Leave any bearings sit long enough and they will have some sign of failure, just depends of weather they are high or low speed bearings as to what you do about replacing them.

I don't know man. I've got an HDD from 1995 that's been sitting all this time and I just plugged it in to see if it still works. No problem.

I've got an old Maxtor 128MB drive, manufactured on the 22nd January 1991, still spins up and goes like a beast. Still has DOS 5.0 on it for all my old games and shaZam!.

Backup everything is all I can say, no method of backup is going to be foolproof, or failsafe, or anything like that. I've had a platter disc shaZam! the bed, and it was a nightmare to get everything back off it. It's not even so much the drive dying, which is a problem in itself, it's when a perfectly good drive decides to wipe it's boot sectors or MFT.

[yamahonkawazuki]

Whichever you use, you want 2 backups for important stuff.
Any backup can fail.
One might be get a terabyte HD for $100 or so as a primary backup.
Then buy a box of 32 or 64 gig memory sticks. Use them as a secondary backup.
Spreading data across many devices insures that if a device fails, you won't lose everything.
Don't forget about the CD or DVD for another copy of important data.

as a common game says ^^^^BINGO ^^^^^

[john]

Any backup is better than no backup.  I have a 2GB external drive that I push a backup every day to. 

[bettingpython]

SSD versus Platters depends on usage. SSD's are great for random read write access but believe it or not for sequential reads the performance is not that great. Until price comes down and reliability increases in the consumer SSD's they are good for your OS and as a swap space but for data storage and archival storage they are unreliable. I had an OCZ take a dump on me 6 months after I built the rig, replaced under warranty. Enterprise class SSD's are astronomical in price and used in fault tolerant storage arrays where the loss of a couple of drives at a time is not a threat to data. (think 4k to 6k per drive with 16 drives in the array)

Write cycles are a reliability myth for SSD's though, yes there is a limit. If you do the calculations on write cycles per cell and disk utilization and how the controller distributes cell utilization across the matrix especially drives in the last 12 months you get roughly 8 years before you have an average of 10% burnt out address blocks. Unless you are doing multiple daily DOD multi pass wipes do not let the write cycle "limitation" of  SSD's influence your decision to use one as your OS... not for storage though. Ideally your OS on pair of SSD's in Raid 1 would be optimal.

Traditional disks, we'll address they go bad if they don't get used first. At one point in time I had an old AS400 at the mortgage company I worked for and it was very scary the one time we powered it completely down. Powering a drive completely down "parks" the disk arms with the read write heads, now it is done automatically but at one time you had to manually park your drives, in some very old IBM drives their were issues with drives that had not been park cycled locking into the parked position and never moving again even though the platters would spin up. Long term inactivity on a modern drive is not a problem if you use it as removable storage. Protect it from static, emf, and physical impact and it's good to go as long as you have a machine capable of reading it. What I mean by that is my gaming rig has no IDE header on the mobo I have SATA cable headers and SAS cable headers but no capability to plug in an older IDE drive, those are going the way of the dinosaur. For online storage a raid 1 array with 2 of the largest drives you can go with is ideal in the consumer market. Personally I use a pair of Terrabyte WD caviar blacks SATA III 3 Gb/s for performance in my storage on my rig. I fail the array remove one of the drives and rebuild onto the spare to archive. For sequential read write operations it's just as fast as my SSD. I also use a 3TB  RAID 1 NAS box for media server media(itunes library and media files used by XBMC) and bare metal backups. Applications install on a 500gb SATA III 6 Gb/s drive.

Drive life expectancy in the consumer market is 5 years. And even at the enterprise level we calculate 5 years as our life expectancy and begin upgrading hardware at that point even though the MTBF rating for enterprise class drives in an array is higher than the individual life expectancy of a consumer drive.

Pretty much the definitive study of hard drive failure prediction rates.
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

[yamahonkawazuki]

got to get another 1tb drive for my comp along with a card ( gpu) which ive got a lead on. even tho its a btx i can make it work. later on planning on making a 4 or 6 core rig for gaming and media and setting the current rig as a network storage and backup deviice