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What is the best HDD for me to get that will not have critical failures throughout it's lifespan? #tech

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robert’s Answer

Solid State with a long life span tend to have a very predictable future based on the number of writes you do.
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Amy’s Answer

Hm. That can be tricky because all hardware can develop problems after a long time, and it's really hard to know when that is. I've had hard drives (and removable media that works like hard drives) that seemed to work well for years until one day it stopped working. :( I like external drives a lot, for example eSATA drives. They sit outside your computer but are portable.


My advice is twofold:


  1. External HDDs are relatively cheap now. I know it's a lot of money maybe but ever year they get so much cheaper and faster and better. I would say to find a drive that is UNDER your budget. Like if you have $100 to spend, I'd look for something in the $75 range. The reason is that after a while you probably want to get a SECOND HDD. Then you essentially "freeze" the first drive by not using it anymore, and you copy all your data to the second drive. That way if the first ever fails you have a second one.
  2. Use the "cloud" as much as possible. These days it is probably cheaper and better to upload the data to Dropbox or Google Drive. Accounts can be expensive, but the Cloud has a lot of benefits. a) It's pretty secure. b) You can change computers and still access your files. c) It's fast.


If you absolutely need a HDD that sits inside your computer, I would say just get whatever is cheap!

Amy recommends the following next steps:

Research Amazon or NewEgg
Look for sales, especially Black Friday
Always buy cheap, and leave budget to buy a second drive after a while
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Jerome’s Answer

Without understanding the environment (is it read-intensive? write-intensive? balanced? random-I/O? sequential-I/O? how much capacity? is RAID a possibility? cost constraints? physical/size constraints? .... ) it's impossible to give a cogent answer to your question.

For general-purpose laptop or home PC use, a typical internal or external SSD (solid-state disk) is probably your best bet, as they combine speed with incredible physical durability; all of today's models are built with capacity to remap blocks, so concerns of excessive writes and so forth are largely a thing of the past.

Regardless of what you choose, factor backups into your equation, do them on a regular basis, and test your restore capability _before_ you need to use it. All devices will eventually fail, and Murphy suggests they'll do so at the worst possible time.
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Brendon’s Answer

I can't tell you a specific model, but I know Western Digital and Crucial make the amazing HDD's.
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