Upgrade from 7 year old 2TB EXT HDD?

cormie

Hey folks,
Just looking for advice on what options are out there these days, to replace a 2TB WD Passport I got 7 years ago?

I actually got 2 at the time and one has failed, with the other seeming like it may be slowing a bit, but I've started using cloud backup so really only 1 is essential, so just seeing what's recommended these days?

I need 2TB minimum. Is SSD a lot more reliable? They are a lot more expensive :eek: Just not sure is it worth it as I don't use it that often anyway and only ever use it for backing stuff up to, not for running programs off or anything, but reliability is important.

Any feedback would be great

greasepalm

Never liked or used passports as had issues with them but my use was for recordings and used desktops hdd with their own power supply.
What about second hand with a 2 year warranty as i bought a ssd from here

https://ie.webuy.com/

cormie

Thanks for the suggestion, I wouldn't really feel comfortable buying a second hand unit for this

I wonder what the performance and reliability difference between SSD and HDD is though, would it be worth paying such a high extra price

Gazzmonkey

cormie wrote: »

I wonder what the performance and reliability difference between SSD and HDD is though, would it be worth paying such a high extra price

In a nutshell, an SSD doesn't have any moving parts so generally more reliable than a mechanical hard drive which can have several moving parts. Also an SSD would be substantially faster than a HDD and would be a great performance boost to any old HDD equipped computer. But flash based & RAM based SSD's are obviously more expensive as they are essentially a big block of flash RAM or DRAM. Another downside would be if the SSD failed, then no data recovery company will be able to help as they are very difficult to work on, but a failed HDD can be repaired and have its data rescued in the majority of cases.

cormie

That's great, thanks a lot for the explanation!

I'm having a look at some of the options on Amazon, and 2TB SSD's are coming to about £300, whereas you can get a 4tB HDD for about £100, or a 2TB one for about £60!

I'm hoping my old passport isn't actually on the way out and is just acting a bit slow because when I connect it, it automatically gets used as I have crashplan backing up to it automatically.

How could I be sure though, I don't want it to just die on me some day, although, from what I know, that's what tends to happen anyway?

Johnboy1951

I would buy two 4TB HDDs, not an SSD, and alternate backups between them.

SSDs are great when fast read and write times are beneficial, such as for the operating system, or if dealing with large databases which are accessed frequently during PC use.

I see no great benefit in having backups on an SSD and a few reasons not to.

cormie

Thanks a lot for that, that's the direction I was leaning alright.

Are you suggesting 2 x drives just to have a backup if one goes bust? That's what I've always done alright, but the need for 2x drives now is lessened as I'm backing up my main OS to crashplan on cloud constantly, as well as also using Google drive within that OS. Although maybe as 2TB is currently enough, I can just get a 4TB drive and keep usin the 2TB one I have until it dies and then look at getting another 4TB.