storage technology: what's the current state here - HDD or SSD for the next decade for my data ...

[d-hubs]

Good day dear Linux-experts, hello to everyone, 

 

well I should create backups on HDDs or SSDs. 

 

my current situation looks like so: I have approximately 500 GB of data – including many photos from the early years of  the 2000s – on an (very old) external hard drive. It's held up well for a long time, and the data is currently fine.

 

now i am frightened - loosing all the data?

 

I do make backups: on two different computers and the external hard drive. I now want to migrate the data from the external hard drive to new hardware, and I'm torn about what to choose next.

So far, my photos and data have been transferred from CDs to HDDs, and I'm at a crossroads again:

 

Well  what do you suggest:   Should I switch from HDDs to SSDs, or are HDDs still better for long-term data storage?

I've done some very extensive research but now i do not know what to choose

 

look forward to hear form you

[strange13930]

4 minutes ago, d-hubs said:

Good day dear Linux-experts, hello to everyone, 

 

well I should create backups on HDDs or SSDs. 

 

my current situation looks like so: I have approximately 500 GB of data – including many photos from the early years of  the 2000s – on an (very old) external hard drive. It's held up well for a long time, and the data is currently fine.

 

now i am frightened - loosing all the data?

 

I do make backups: on two different computers and the external hard drive. I now want to migrate the data from the external hard drive to new hardware, and I'm torn about what to choose next.

So far, my photos and data have been transferred from CDs to HDDs, and I'm at a crossroads again:

 

Well  what do you suggest:   Should I switch from HDDs to SSDs, or are HDDs still better for long-term data storage?

I've done some very extensive research but now i do not know what to choose

 

look forward to hear form you

the hdd will be better for long term storage.

[OddOod]

At half a terabyte with triple backups it really won't matter. I would even say that given 100$/yr will get you either 2TB gDrive or 1PC of BackBlaze,  you might even consider those. 
One consideration between HDD and SSD is that a properly stored HDD will last 10+ years on a shelf, but a cheap SSD might need to be powered quarterly

 

[Timme]

1 minute ago, OddOod said:

At half a terabyte with triple backups it really won't matter. I would even say that given 100$/yr will get you either 2TB gDrive or 1PC of BackBlaze,  you might even consider those. 
One consideration between HDD and SSD is that a properly stored HDD will last 10+ years on a shelf, but a cheap SSD might need to be powered quarterly

 

Where's the picture from? It's kinda nonsensical.

[twin_savage]

2 hours ago, OddOod said:

but a cheap SSD might need to be powered quarterly

Powering up SSDs does nothing to refresh the charge decay that occurs in them over time, a complete rewrite of data is the only thing that refreshes the cells on consumer SSDs; there are some notable exceptions to this like the mx500, but consumer SSDs that preemptively refresh cells are very rare.

 

2 hours ago, Timme said:

Where's the picture from? It's kinda nonsensical.

Those retention times seem reasonable for moderately-worn NAND + internal ECC.

[worstalentscout]

8 hours ago, twin_savage said:

Powering up SSDs does nothing to refresh the charge decay that occurs in them over time, a complete rewrite of data is the only thing that refreshes the cells on consumer SSDs; there are some notable exceptions to this like the mx500, but consumer SSDs that preemptively refresh cells are very rare.

 

Those retention times seem reasonable for moderately-worn NAND + internal ECC.

 

 

hi, mind telling me why the MX500 is the exception ?

 

i'm using them at the moment but unaware of any special feature about refreshing the cells............

[twin_savage]

3 hours ago, worstalentscout said:

hi, mind telling me why the MX500 is the exception ?

Its hard to say why Crucial decided to give the SSD this feature, but I suspect it is related to the controller it uses.

This is likely the feature the SM2258 controller uses to keep the cell's refreshed and bitrot at bay.

 

The only way I can think of to find out which SSDs let NAND charge decay happen (even while powered on) is testing them though, which is how it was discovered that the MX500 prevents decay simply by being plugged into power.

There's a big thread on L1techs about this and it seems like SAS and enterprise NVMe SSDs generally have this NAND charge decay refresh routine running when powered on; conversely almost no consumer SSDs seem to have this feature yet.

 

[OddOod]

On 4/15/2025 at 8:12 AM, Timme said:

Where's the picture from? It's kinda nonsensical.

AI Overview

 

22 hours ago, twin_savage said:

Powering up SSDs does nothing to refresh the charge decay that occurs in them over time

Really? I had assumed that there would be some TRIM-like operation that would monitor for that...

10 hours ago, twin_savage said:

this feature

Yeah! Like that! Kinda amazed that this isn't just standard

 

10 hours ago, twin_savage said:

There's a big thread on L1techs about this and it seems like SAS and enterprise NVMe SSDs generally have this NAND charge decay refresh routine running when powered on; conversely almost no consumer SSDs seem to have this feature yet.

This is so cool. I adore the truly nerdy teck community ^.^
At a guess the reason it's missing on consumer grade ones is that it increases wear on the NAND. I could easily see a situation where some drive manufacturer gets sued for "unnecessary wear causing early failure" or some such nonsense

 

[ewitte]

HDD in some kind of RAID with offsite backups.  I backup to my Synology and then have important documents go to my OneDrive (1TB), Google (5TB), sometimes both.  Really, I sync my OneDrive on like 5 devices, so those files are all over the place.  I don't back up movies, TV recordings, etc. I'll just have to start over just too much data.

[worstalentscout]

On 4/16/2025 at 12:21 PM, twin_savage said:

Its hard to say why Crucial decided to give the SSD this feature, but I suspect it is related to the controller it uses.

This is likely the feature the SM2258 controller uses to keep the cell's refreshed and bitrot at bay.

 

The only way I can think of to find out which SSDs let NAND charge decay happen (even while powered on) is testing them though, which is how it was discovered that the MX500 prevents decay simply by being plugged into power.

There's a big thread on L1techs about this and it seems like SAS and enterprise NVMe SSDs generally have this NAND charge decay refresh routine running when powered on; conversely almost no consumer SSDs seem to have this feature yet.

 

 

many thanks for the info..........so i better buy a couple more MX500s then before they're out of stock.............

[Timme]

21 hours ago, OddOod said:

AI Overview

Checks out