Backing up with 16TB SSD Mobile external drives

[BeBu Lamar]

Actually it was just a few years ago for me. Somehow they missed me for about three years and let me view Youtube without ads.

 

So I signed up yesterday for the first free month. Of course, you have to give them your credit card so when you forget in the second month, you start getting charged automatically, another con.

 

It is kind of nice not having to watch the same vile ads about thirty times an hour. Especially when some of them don't even apply to me. Why do they have to torture you so much? I'd rather be waterboarded. I guess it's their way to get you to buy the no-ad service.

 

Thanks for the tip.

Of course you do whatever you want but I do not appreciate people who subscribe because the free youtube will go away when they have enough people like you.

[Mary Doo]

Of course you do whatever you want but I do not appreciate people who subscribe because the free youtube will go away when they have enough people like you.

Quite an interesting theory you have. ;) Think free is nice (won't it nice if more things are free?) but someone is paying for the freeness - and the advertisers are those people. It is unlikely "free with annoyance" will not be around anytime soon because advertisers want customers and YouTube wants revenue. Afterall, it is a business. So people should be free to choose videos with or without advertising harassments when subscription income replaces the advertising income. Seriously, I wish people can pay to be free from spam phone calls and spam emails. But unfortunately... :eek::oops::rolleyes::(

Edited July 25, 2022 by Mary Doo

[BeBu Lamar]

Quite an interesting theory you have. ;) Think free is nice (won't it nice if more things are free?) but someone is paying for the freeness - and the advertisers are those people. It is unlikely "free with annoyance" will not be around anytime soon because advertisers want customers and YouTube wants revenue. Afterall, it is a business. So people should be free to choose videos with or without advertising harassments when subscription income replaces the advertising income. Seriously, I wish people can pay to be free from spam phone calls and spam emails. But unfortunately... :eek::oops::rolleyes::(

Once again you do whatever you want and I have no right to to tell you what to do. But what the majority of people do affect the minority. The ads never bother me and I would lose youtube all together as I would never subscribe. So although I have no right I do not wish that more people subscribe.

[q.g._de_bakker]

Once again you do whatever you want and I have no right to to tell you what to do. But what the majority of people do affect the minority. The ads never bother me and I would lose youtube all together as I would never subscribe. So although I have no right I do not wish that more people subscribe.

Why would YouTube cut off part of their money channels? As long as there are plenty nonsubscribed users, there is a lot of money to be made. And 'plenty' could be as low as 5% of their visitors. Even less.

So don't fret about it. They will keep serving ads to you.

[q.g._de_bakker]

Why would YouTube cut off part of their money channels? As long as there are plenty nonsubscribed users, there is a lot of money to be made. And 'plenty' could be as low as 5% of their visitors. Even less.

So don't fret about it. They will keep serving ads to you.

P.S.

Looked up some numbers. YouTube's advertising revenue accounts for 11.2% of their income. That 11.2% is good for approx. 3.32 billion us$. And despite your fears about paid subscriptions and their effect on advertising, those 11.2% are up from 10.9% the year before, and 7.3% in 2017.

Don't worry.

[AlanKlein]

Quite an interesting theory you have. ;) Think free is nice (won't it nice if more things are free?) but someone is paying for the freeness - and the advertisers are those people. It is unlikely "free with annoyance" will not be around anytime soon because advertisers want customers and YouTube wants revenue. Afterall, it is a business. So people should be free to choose videos with or without advertising harassments when subscription income replaces the advertising income. Seriously, I wish people can pay to be free from spam phone calls and spam emails. But unfortunately... :eek::oops::rolleyes::(

Remember when cable first came out and you bought it.?They argued there would be no ads on your cable TV so it was worth the cost. Only broadcast TV with the rabbit ear antennas would have ads. So much for promises. ;)

[mike_halliwell]

Only broadcast TV with the rabbit ear antennas would have ads. So much for promises. ;)

....and Nuclear Power was going to be so cheap they wouldn't have to meter it! :D

[rodeo_joe1]

If I read your reply correctly, you are writing that for like capacity and like NAND (3-bit NAND to 3-bit NAND) the SATA interface SSD is MORE expensive than the NVMe SSD.

Yep. That's what I'm seeing here. I suspect it's due to dealers still trying to offload stocks of older 2.5" SSDs bought during the chip shortage at a high price, while newer M2 sticks have marginally dropped in price over the past few months. CPU prices are all over the place as well, with higher-performing and newer ones being priced more reasonably than older, less good versions. Even on the same version though, the spread of price between retailers is huge. Maybe now is not a good time to make relative price comparisons!?

 

WRT robustness of solid-state v spinning-disc backup. The read-write cycle number shouldn't really be a consideration. It's a backup. Only needing to be seldom read in an emergency, and not written to constantly either. But perhaps needing to be transported from site to site many times. In this respect the SSD excels in not having delicate moving parts. Plus, my personal experience puts the reliable 24/7 working life of an HDD at between 3 and 5 years. Pretty sure an SSD could easily outlive that life expectancy.

[ilkka_nissila]

WRT robustness of solid-state v spinning-disc backup. The read-write cycle number shouldn't really be a consideration. It's a backup. Only needing to be seldom read in an emergency, and not written to constantly either. But perhaps needing to be transported from site to site many times. In this respect the SSD excels in not having delicate moving parts. Plus, my personal experience puts the reliable 24/7 working life of an HDD at between 3 and 5 years. Pretty sure an SSD could easily outlive that life expectancy.

 

[solved] Is SSD Good for Long Term Storage: Past VS Now

 

"

For this chart, you can see that while working, within the normal temperature range from 25°C to 55°C, the lifespan of an SSD increases (from 58 weeks to 404 weeks) with the increase of temp. While, when powering off, the data retention time is inversely proportional to the temp.

 

If an SSD commonly works at a temperature of 40 °C while staying in an environment of 25 °C when power off, it is expected to last 105 weeks (about 2 years). Yet, if the SSD keeps working in the same temp of 40 °C while the temp when power off increases 5 °C and reaches 30 °C, its data retention period halved to 52 weeks (around 1 year).

 

Overall, it is free of worry for data retention of an SSD in a normal client environment. The SSD tested is already exceeded its endurance temperature. Thus, for a new drive, data retention is comparatively higher. Is SSD good for long term data storage? Yes!"

 

I found recommendations suggesting that one needs to not only periodically power on the drive but also read all of the data to maintain data integrity (so small errors can be corrected before they become uncorrectable). If the SSD is sitting on a shelf for years, some of the data might not be intact.

 

I use NAS units with HDDs for long-term storage but mostly SSDs for software and editing.

[q.g._de_bakker]

And that still is the sensible thing to do: use HDDs for storage (long term an frequently accessed) and SSDs to speed up access to stuff that is not irreplaceable when lost, or that doesn't need to be kept (scratch disk).

[steve_gallimore1]

On a somewhat related note, I'm currently working my way through a pile of old hard disk drives, of the spinning rust (magnetic) variety, mostly to check for sensitive data before recycling them, but also in case something was missed from a backup.

 

Drives are between 4 and 500GB, both IDE and SATA. None have been started in at least 7 years, some far longer.

 

So far, only one drive has failed to read, a Quantum Fireball that was likely nearer to 30 years old than 20, couldn't tell you the capacity, it was old enough to only be marked in C/H/S.

 

So, so far, it's looking good for the spinning rust.

[AlanKlein]

....and Nuclear Power was going to be so cheap they wouldn't have to meter it! :D

Aren't they saying the same thing about wind and solar?

[AlanKlein]

[solved] Is SSD Good for Long Term Storage: Past VS Now

 

"

For this chart, you can see that while working, within the normal temperature range from 25°C to 55°C, the lifespan of an SSD increases (from 58 weeks to 404 weeks) with the increase of temp. While, when powering off, the data retention time is inversely proportional to the temp.

 

If an SSD commonly works at a temperature of 40 °C while staying in an environment of 25 °C when power off, it is expected to last 105 weeks (about 2 years). Yet, if the SSD keeps working in the same temp of 40 °C while the temp when power off increases 5 °C and reaches 30 °C, its data retention period halved to 52 weeks (around 1 year).

 

Overall, it is free of worry for data retention of an SSD in a normal client environment. The SSD tested is already exceeded its endurance temperature. Thus, for a new drive, data retention is comparatively higher. Is SSD good for long term data storage? Yes!"

 

I found recommendations suggesting that one needs to not only periodically power on the drive but also read all of the data to maintain data integrity (so small errors can be corrected before they become uncorrectable). If the SSD is sitting on a shelf for years, some of the data might not be intact.

 

I use NAS units with HDDs for long-term storage but mostly SSDs for software and editing.

So would regular HD's be better for long-term storage than SSD's? What's the difference if you know?

[AlanKlein]

On a somewhat related note, I'm currently working my way through a pile of old hard disk drives, of the spinning rust (magnetic) variety, mostly to check for sensitive data before recycling them, but also in case something was missed from a backup.

 

Drives are between 4 and 500GB, both IDE and SATA. None have been started in at least 7 years, some far longer.

 

So far, only one drive has failed to read, a Quantum Fireball that was likely nearer to 30 years old than 20, couldn't tell you the capacity, it was old enough to only be marked in C/H/S.

 

So, so far, it's looking good for the spinning rust.

I'm going through a bunch of old DVDs and CDs that have been sitting around for years with photos on them, I've found a few that just won't open. Some that have failed are the very best Gold type, so that's really disappointing being promised longevity at extra money. Where do I get a refund? :mad:

[bgelfand]

Yep. That's what I'm seeing here. I suspect it's due to dealers still trying to offload stocks of older 2.5" SSDs bought during the chip shortage at a high price, while newer M2 sticks have marginally dropped in price over the past few months. CPU prices are all over the place as well, with higher-performing and newer ones being priced more reasonably than older, less good versions. Even on the same version though, the spread of price between retailers is huge. Maybe now is not a good time to make relative price comparisons!?

 

WRT robustness of solid-state v spinning-disc backup. The read-write cycle number shouldn't really be a consideration. It's a backup. Only needing to be seldom read in an emergency, and not written to constantly either. But perhaps needing to be transported from site to site many times. In this respect the SSD excels in not having delicate moving parts. Plus, my personal experience puts the reliable 24/7 working life of an HDD at between 3 and 5 years. Pretty sure an SSD could easily outlive that life expectancy.

 

 

I suspect that dealers are trying to clear the shelves of older NVMe PCIe 3 and slower PCIe 4 drives as the newer NVMe PCIe 5 drives are about to be released using newer NAND chips.

 

Micron has released their new 232-layer NAND chips (and I though the 176-layer coupled with the Phison E18 controller was fast.)

 

LINK: Micron’s 232 Layer NAND Now Shipping: 1Tbit, 6-Plane Dies With 50% More I/O Bandwidth (anandtech.com)

 

And writing of Phison, they wiil release/have released to certain SSD manufacturers their new E26 controller

 

LINK: PHISON Electronics Corp. - PCIe

 

And of course, Samsung and SKHynix are also about to release competing products.

 

It should be and interesting fall and winter for new products as both Intel and AMD release new processors that support PCIe 5.

[CvhKaar]

The chalenge of digital pictures : There is still no medium that you can trust to hold the picture for over 20 years, old cd's , DvD's, or other disk the plastic either get;s brittle or gets tellow making them hard to read, VHS Tape ==> no equipment to play them gets produced, Harddisk lives in theory forever but in reality average arround 10-15 years when left alone etc. etc.

Analog ( film) is also not ideal , colours fade .. Only monochrome film material sometimes seems to live for over a century .....

[q.g._de_bakker]

The chalenge of digital pictures : There is still no medium that you can trust to hold the picture for over 20 years, old cd's , DvD's, or other disk the plastic either get;s brittle or gets tellow making them hard to read, VHS Tape ==> no equipment to play them gets produced, Harddisk lives in theory forever but in reality average arround 10-15 years when left alone etc. etc.

Analog ( film) is also not ideal , colours fade .. Only monochrome film material sometimes seems to live for over a century .....

That is not that big of a problem. Just copy your data to new media when those emerge and appear to be stable. And keep the data on the old media too.

Upto now, hard disks (technology from about 50 years ago) have proven to be good. Yes, they can fail. But during that time we have seen them grow in capacity from almost nothing to many terabytes, and have upgraded regularly to larger disks, migrating the data we want them to store for us along the way. So old techology, but the last time you moved your data to fresh disks is probably not that long ago.

[q.g._de_bakker]

CDs and DVDs have never looked good for long term storage. When introduced, the main selling point was that digital recordings of music sounded so much better. I remember the talk about not suffering physical wear as vinyl records, being resistant to dust and wear (ecc and all that). But also how a demonstration of how robust they were went wrong when a CD became unreadable after an enthousiastic sales person put a scratch on it. On the radio too it was not uncommon to hear the distinct sound produced when a CD player kept trying to read a part and could not get past that, got stuck trying. News about both the foil and plastic not being very robust over time followed very soon, in particular regarding writeables and rewriteables. No archival medium. DVDs not much different.

Magnetic tape is known not to stand up to time very well too. The narrower the tape, or rather the track, used to record something, the sooner you would lose it.

HDDs really aren't bad.

[BeBu Lamar]

CD and DVD are relatively durable but only the molded type that already have data on them not the recordable type.

[CvhKaar]

That is not that big of a problem. Just copy your data to new media when those emerge and appear to be stable. And keep the data on the old media too.

Upto now, hard disks (technology from about 50 years ago) have proven to be good. Yes, they can fail. But during that time we have seen them grow in capacity from almost nothing to many terabytes, and have upgraded regularly to larger disks, migrating the data we want them to store for us along the way. So old techology, but the last time you moved your data to fresh disks is probably not that long ago.

challenge is : you donot know when to copy terrabytes of pictures , everytime it becomes more expensive and more time consuming to copy everything while also keeping track of what is on wich disk / devic etc.

this becomes especially cumbersome for museum and/or historical collections where modern digital becomes ïnvisible"where slide and film remain vissible [and have their own chalenges..}

[q.g._de_bakker]

challenge is : you donot know when to copy terrabytes of pictures , everytime it becomes more expensive and more time consuming to copy everything while also keeping track of what is on wich disk / devic etc.

this becomes especially cumbersome for museum and/or historical collections where modern digital becomes ïnvisible"where slide and film remain vissible [and have their own chalenges..}

Well, no.

 

I don't use any of the 30 or 40 GB HDDs that i used, what?, 10 years ago anymore. Do you?

Data have migrated to the next generation, of 200 to 500 GB HDDs, because i needed more space for both programs and data.

I don't use those anymore either, switched to 1 and 2 TB drives, for the same reason. Data were again copied. Those 1 and 2 TB drives again are almost completely replaced by larger drives. Data again were copied.

None of that because i was trying to figure out when the moment was the risk would become too great to keep everything on the old media. All as part of the natural upgrade cycle we all go through. No hard to decide estimates of when the moment it would be almost too late had come, but just 'in the flow' of things.

 

Copying files takes a while yes. But has become faster over the years, despite the growing amounts of GBs and TBs needing to be copied.

 

Things have not become increasingly expensive. On the contrary: much (and really much) cheaper.

 

Also it neither is a lot of work (how much work do you suppose it is to instruct a computer to copy the content of one HDD to another one?), nor is it difficult to keep track where everything is. All in the same place, but on HDDs with room to spare.

 

Large collections (musea, libraries and such) use a decent catalogue to keep track of what they have and where it can be found. Makes no difference whether an item is a digital file or a tangible negative. In fact, digital and digitized items are much easier to store, retrieve and keep safe than physical items.

 

In short: you are quite wrong in everything you said.

[ilkka_nissila]

Also it neither is a lot of work (how much work do you suppose it is to instruct a computer to copy the content of one HDD to another one?),

 

Of course not, but let's say one has 40 TB of files, and keeps two backup copies so it's 120 TB. Now when you want more space what do you do? Buy new drives, and it can take days or weeks to copy the files to the new system. Since the old is not broken, what right does one have to just dump it? I think generally speaking products should be kept in use until they have outrun their usable lifespan and cannot be repaired. The purchase of new items consumes natural resources and the environment, and the recycling of old items is hardly something perfect (perfect recycling would be that the raw materials are returned to the original Earth mines, which are then naturalized so that they are like before humans, and the emitted CO2 from the lifespan of the product is recaptured from atmosphere). While going for new and larger drives and every time migrating one's whole data set sounds like it would make life easier I can never justify dumping the old drives simply because resources were used to make them and those cannot be practically returned to Earth. So I try to keep the use of new storage to the smallest amount (while not limiting my shooting severely) and I'm always in a situation that I need to do a lot of deletion of files to be able to store my new images for editing.

Edited July 28, 2022 by ilkka_nissila

[q.g._de_bakker]

Also it neither is a lot of work (how much work do you suppose it is to instruct a computer to copy the content of one HDD to another one?),

 

Of course not, but let's say one has 40 TB of files, and keeps two backup copies so it's 120 TB. Now when you want more space what do you do? Buy new drives, and it can take days or weeks to copy the files to the new system. Since the old is not broken, what right does one have to just dump it? I think generally speaking products should be kept in use until they have outrun their usable lifespan and cannot be repaired. The purchase of new items consumes natural resources and the environment, and the recycling of old items is hardly something perfect (perfect recycling would be that the raw materials are returned to the original Earth mines, which are then naturalized so that they are like before humans, and the emitted CO2 from the lifespan of the product is recaptured from atmosphere). While going for new and larger drives and every time migrating one's whole data set sounds like it would make life easier I can never justify dumping the old drives simply because resources were used to make them and those cannot be practically returned to Earth. So I try to keep the use of new storage to the smallest amount (while not limiting my shooting severely) and I'm always in a situation that I need to do a lot of deletion of files to be able to store my new images for editing.

As someone said earlier: "Just copy your data to new media when those emerge and appear to be stable. And keep the data on the old media too."

 

Free extra copies of the older part of your collection.

And do not forget that we all haven't switched from 10 or 20 MB HDDs to 10 TB HDDs just for the heck of it, flaunting all sensible environmental considerations, but because we needed more than those 10 MB of storage. More than those 30 GB. More, again, than those 300 GB. Et cetera.

[AlanKlein]

What guarantees are there that cloud storage services don't go bad as well over time? Don't some old files just sit there in storage as well that aren't turned over?

[q.g._de_bakker]

What guarantees are there that cloud storage services don't go bad as well over time? Don't some old files just sit there in storage as well that aren't turned over?

No guarantees. That's one reason to arrange your own, personal cloud.