I manage 100s of drives. And personally nearly 100 HD.
SSD have speed advantages, but they are universally denied to be storage or archive options.
SSD failure has an almost 100% data loss-extraction gaurantee.
I love the SSD on my Macbook Air and a handful of SSD that I use, one of which is inside a mac mini.
Both SSD and conventional HD have upsides and downsides, which you are not fully aware of. 😊
Compartmentalization and redundancy are two keywords all professionals keep in mind when it comes to vital data archiving and protection, and it would behoove the casual and serious user alike to reflect that position in his or her personal valuable data.
I never "run out of space" .
In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace. You should never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’.
Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their computers internal HD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.
Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your macbook has a HD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your computer to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.
Archive Diversity of Data
As important as having multiple copies of your data hub (vital files) is having those copies somewhere that long-term data retention is a guarantee. As stated earlier, given the second law of thermodynamics, any and all current mfg. HD will, under perfect storage conditions tend themselves to depolarization and a point will be reached, even if the HD mechanism is perfect, that the ferromagnetic read/write surface of the platter inside the HD will entropy to the point of no return for data extraction.
HD life varies, but barring mechanical failure, 3-8 years typically. Hard drive mortality spikes in the first month or so, and then falls to nill before, after time, rising gradually and assuredly. This initial ‘infant mortality’ needs to be check especially in instances of new static HD archives.
Archival DVD blank media only costs an average of 20% more than conventional low grade DVD media but has an extremely low reject rate and most importantly an extremely high life rating, many 60+ years, and century disks which are rated for 100, or 150+ years if stored under cool dark ideal conditions. There is little more frustrating than the thought much less the reality of losing years or a lifetimes worth of work over a $20 price difference between a 100-pack of low grade storage DVD media and professional DVD blank media.
It is ironic that many of us will buy expensive computers and spend years and great effort creating data but don’t think twice about buying unreliable storage media to safeguard our valuable work, pictures, documents, books, and things so important to us and others.
In the case of ‘large data’ where many 100’s of DVD blanks becomes unrealistic for your data hub preservation, having revolving HD archives copied and checked on a regular basis becomes vitally important but more importantly as supplemented by offsite storage hosting of your data in at least 2 locations where HD natural degradation is of no concern since there is no single HD at a hosting farm, typically, where data can crash and be lost.
In considering the idealized use of DVD archival media, archived hard drives, and offsite-hosting storage, each has its benefits and drawbacks. In the case of DVD media, one cannot typically archive large amounts of data in the 2+ terabyte range realistically since this would involve a very large number of disks amounting to 212 DVD blanks per terabyte archived. In the bottleneck limitation of DVD media, if one has large data, reserve at the very least priority “cannot lose at any cost data” for burning to this option for safekeeping.
Advantages of HD archives are obvious in that 2.5” are very compact, much more reliable than years past, and massive amounts of data can be stored securely with ease in a very small space. Roughly 60 terabytes of data can be stored in a volume the size of a shoebox. The drawback of this type of storage is natural long-term degradation of the ferromagnetic data stored on the disks, and a potential EM pulse can wipe out an entire data archive in a matter of milliseconds. Additionally these HD need to be protected from theft, and exposure by means of either a firebox, safe, or safety deposit box, or a likewise secure and environmentally isolated container. To safeguard against degradation, optimally you would upgrade these HD archives every year or two just as you would the batteries in your smoke detector, even if still good.
Advantages of hosting archives are that, as stated, there is no single location (in terms of large data farms) for HD degradation to bring down your archived data hub. The best advantage of online private and secure data archiving is that your data is protected from fires, and natural disasters at your location, and this data can be pulled from anywhere on earth with ease. The drawbacks of this type of storage archive is if you fail to pay and forget to update payment for your hosting storage, your data can be erased, additionally if you don’t take steps to safeguard this data by hiding it, encrypting it, or likewise measures, it can be attacked, erased, or corrupted by third parties. This offsite online archive option is best idealized as a third location to park a copy of your files to be archived.
Peace 😊
