External Hard Drives

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

Not nearly enough storage for video; I have 120TB for video storage, just sayin.

Well, Robert might have a different set of requirements; it just depends on his application(s).

We're all just trying to help him make informed decisions, so its all good.

[Masterlu]

Of course!

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

Of course!

[clpetersen]

Originally Posted by alkizz

Definitely go SSD. No moving parts susceptible to failure like the WD.

you could buy an internal SSD and use something like this turn it into an external

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-2-5-I...s%2C258&sr=8-4

SSD's are great but their failure rates vary considerably. The most reliable are very reliable and are the most expensive - governed by their internal technology (see link below).

https://www.wepc.com/tips/ssd-reliability/

[Puma Cat]

Originally Posted by clpetersen

SSD's are great but their failure rates vary considerably. The most reliable are very reliable and are the most expensive - governed by their internal technology (see link below).

https://www.wepc.com/tips/ssd-reliability/

Interesting article; well-written and informative. Nice to see reference to MTBF.

Having done a LOT of digital photography over the last 16 years, I've settled on Sandisk for my NAND flash memory media. Toshiba is good too, and I'm confident that Samsung, who's been in the RAM/NAND memory business longer than almost anyone, is as well. I've tried a bunch of others, e.g. Lexar (now defunct), ProGrade, Transcend, etc., and have had the best durability with Sandisk. In fact, I don't think I've ever had a Sandisk card fail on me (note: there are lot of counterfeit Sandisk sold on Amazon, so buy from a reputable reseller, e.g. B&H, Adorama, etc.)

Lexar, OTOH, has given me nothing but problems; in the last year or so, I had 3 Lexar cards fail on me in the space of less than a year, which is likely why Micron Technologies sold off the Lexar brand, assets, and materials, mfg, etc. to Longsys.

[alkizz]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Interesting article; well-written and informative. Nice to see reference to MTBF.

Having done a LOT of digital photography over the last 16 years, I've settled on Sandisk for my NAND flash memory media. Toshiba is good too, and I'm confident that Samsung, who's been in the RAM/NAND memory business longer than almost anyone, is as well. I've tried a bunch of others, e.g. Lexar (now defunct), ProGrade, Transcend, etc., and have had the best durability with Sandisk. In fact, I don't think I've ever had a Sandisk card fail on me (note: there are lot of counterfeit Sandisk sold on Amazon, so buy from a reputable reseller, e.g. B&H, Adorama, etc.)

Lexar, OTOH, has given me nothing but problems; in the last year or so, I had 3 Lexar cards fail on me in the space of less than a year, which is likely why Micron Technologies sold off the Lexar brand, assets, and materials, mfg, etc. to Longsys.

I've got 2 Samsung SSDs in my music server. Rock solid so far but failure is always a worry. I'll probably grab another and back up everything as a safeguard thanks to this thread...

[alkizz]

Originally Posted by clpetersen

SSD's are great but their failure rates vary considerably. The most reliable are very reliable and are the most expensive - governed by their internal technology (see link below).

https://www.wepc.com/tips/ssd-reliability/

That's a great link! Will be using some of those tools at the bottom of the article to monitor the health of my drives! Thank you.

[Robert_Anderson]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

Not nearly enough storage for video; I have 120TB for video storage, just sayin.

Thanks guys!

So, the ability to access anything via the internet is impossible on these remote sites. I have maybe 80TB of videos archived on standard external hard drives (mostly Seagate 8TB). I was thinking of transferring the ones I really want to watch (rotating) on solid state drives to play through the Silenzio from the external drive.

[clpetersen]

SSD's are not considered good choices for archival storage. - below is a post from a subject matter expert -
-- it seems analog wins here - LP's, Kodachrome, even magnetic tapes (I think).

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ian Adams
Ian Adams, PhD Computer Science, University of California, Santa Cruz (2013)
Answered Sep 14, 2018
So, stumbled on this by accident, but this is right in my wheelhouse (my PhD was actually on storage systems with a focus on archival storage).

So, generically, throwing data on any media and forgetting about it is a Bad Idea. (We call this benign neglect). HDDs, optical disk, etc, all degrade. Sometimes there are situations where the media might be fine, but its hard to find readers (data loss by obsolescence).

Anyways, the prior answers are accurate-ish: solid-state storage (that based on NAND) loses charge over time. So throwing something on a thumb-drive and forgetting about it is basically rolling the dice. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you wont. To be fair, this is a problem on most media. Those data retention lifetimes you see are often optimistic and based on accelerated lifetime tests assuming a well controlled environment. e.g. kept in a low-humidity, temperature controlled environment with a stable power supply, minimal vibration, no human intervention.

Throwing something on an SSD in a running system is a different kettle of fish. Modern SSDs have a phenomenal amount of engineering to keep your date relatively safe, including “under-the-hood” refreshes, so those data retention times are squirrelly. There’s also complex algorithms for shuffling data around due to quirks of how SSDs write and delete data. Newer SSDs (like Intel Optane) have different characteristics and failure types…

In larger scale systems, by default multiple copies of the data are maintained and checked (in a process called scrubbing or integrity checking), which further reduce data loss risks, identifying data loss and corruption and automatically rebuilding lost copies.

The only way to keep data safe (and there is no foolproof system) is to have a combination of multiple copies* and a process to periodically verify they’re valid.

And because there isn’t enough to think about, the vast majority of data loss events are human or “black-swan” events. e.g. a server rack falls over, spilled a coke on your laptop, forgot a portable drive in the sun.

*Yes, I’m aware of erasure coding, I’m generalizing here

10k views · View Upvoters

[Robert_Anderson]

Originally Posted by clpetersen

SSD's are not considered good choices for archival storage. - below is a post from a subject matter expert -
-- it seems analog wins here - LP's, Kodachrome, even magnetic tapes (I think).

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ian Adams
Ian Adams, PhD Computer Science, University of California, Santa Cruz (2013)
Answered Sep 14, 2018
So, stumbled on this by accident, but this is right in my wheelhouse (my PhD was actually on storage systems with a focus on archival storage).

So, generically, throwing data on any media and forgetting about it is a Bad Idea. (We call this benign neglect). HDDs, optical disk, etc, all degrade. Sometimes there are situations where the media might be fine, but its hard to find readers (data loss by obsolescence).

Anyways, the prior answers are accurate-ish: solid-state storage (that based on NAND) loses charge over time. So throwing something on a thumb-drive and forgetting about it is basically rolling the dice. Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you wont. To be fair, this is a problem on most media. Those data retention lifetimes you see are often optimistic and based on accelerated lifetime tests assuming a well controlled environment. e.g. kept in a low-humidity, temperature controlled environment with a stable power supply, minimal vibration, no human intervention.

Throwing something on an SSD in a running system is a different kettle of fish. Modern SSDs have a phenomenal amount of engineering to keep your date relatively safe, including “under-the-hood” refreshes, so those data retention times are squirrelly. There’s also complex algorithms for shuffling data around due to quirks of how SSDs write and delete data. Newer SSDs (like Intel Optane) have different characteristics and failure types…

In larger scale systems, by default multiple copies of the data are maintained and checked (in a process called scrubbing or integrity checking), which further reduce data loss risks, identifying data loss and corruption and automatically rebuilding lost copies.

The only way to keep data safe (and there is no foolproof system) is to have a combination of multiple copies* and a process to periodically verify they’re valid.

And because there isn’t enough to think about, the vast majority of data loss events are human or “black-swan” events. e.g. a server rack falls over, spilled a coke on your laptop, forgot a portable drive in the sun.

*Yes, I’m aware of erasure coding, I’m generalizing here

10k views · View Upvoters

Thanks for sharing the article. My decision will not be how to store permanently, but how to get the best results for playback.