HDD Recommendations For Long-Term Photo & Video Storage

[Abdelfattah Radwan]

Hello everyone!

 

Me and my family have over 30 years worth of photos & videos that occupy over 2 TB on my personal computer and since I do some stuff that (for me at least) seem quite dangerous (for example: duel booting operating systems, developing apps & games, installing Windows 10 updates, etc...).

 

I almost get a cardiac arrest whenever I think about what would happen if I screwup at some point and do something that might lead to corrupt the data on the HDD or if the HDD itself fails.

 

I've had this HDD (It's from Western Digital) since 2011 or 2012 and it's starting to get really slow and make a strange "grinding" sound.

 

So, I would like to know your recommendations for a HDD that is:

 

• External preferably for portability.
• Meant for extreme-long term storage (10+ years from NOW).
• Durable and can withstand some fall damage (not that I'm clumsy or anything).
• Decent read/write speed but this doesn't really matter that much as I'm not going to game on it for instance.
• It's capacity must be at least 2 TB and maximum 8 TB.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Abdel Fattah Radwan
Made target HDD lifetime more reasonable.

[Levent]

Just now, Abdel Fattah Radwan said:

• Meant for extreme-long term storage (20+ years from NOW).

Not gonna happen. 

[Abdelfattah Radwan]

Just now, Levent said:

Not gonna happen. 

Okay, I updated the topic to make the lifetime expectation more reasonable.

[LWM723]

What about ransomware. Get those files on ANY external drive or in the cloud ASAP. 2 copies would be best.

[Blue4130]

12 hours ago, Abdel Fattah Radwan said:

 

• Durable and can withstand some fall damage (not that I'm clumsy or anything).

This is a problem. Not good for harddrives. 

[Abdelfattah Radwan]

7 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

This is a problem. Not good for harddrives. 

I think I will just put it inside something that's padded from the inside and hard from the outside when I'm not using it and for example traveling.

[e22big]

I think if you just use it for storage and absolutely nothing else, any HDD can last for a very long time. All of my HDD are a relic from last buildt - and my latest buildt is almost 7 years ago, they should be altogether age well over 10 years at this point. All of them are still working fine without any issue (WD Green and something else, they weren't even a premium HDD