I own several external 2.5’’ HDDs on the 1 TB range where I save my data. Samsung has worked well for me, but now I need more space.

One option would be to buy an external SSD instead of HDD.

Another would be to get an external NVME, but so far I haven’t found cases for them.

Nowadays we even have 1 TB flash drives, should I get one of these instead?

I could also buy 2 0.5 TB micro SD cards instead.

So many options make it difficult to decide.

What brands and technologies do you recommend?

Software is going to be debian based.

  • klad@feddit.de
    51·
    6 months ago

    HDDs have moving parts and can break if handled boldly, yes. But other than that they are more durable. SSDs (no matter the port or protocol) are always limited in lifetime by the program-erase cycles of NAND flash. It’s a bit more involved, but maybe read up on what the Flash Translation Layer does, if you are interested. The gist is, that an SSD may only be fully rewritten a thousand or so times (depending on the quality of the flash) before it breaks.

    SSDs are more expensive but have no sector-based search times and are faster.

    Reliability can go bad for both sides. That’s why RAID exists.

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
      2·
      6 months ago

      Interesting. Yes for sure, the amount of writes over time is really important.

      I find it crazy how HDDs can spin all the time, so damn fast. So I just generally dont trust them.

      Like, 7200rpm, that is 3.784.320.000 (3,7 Billion) times a year. Just scary.