QOTW:Do you still use mechanical storage?

[3dcandy]

I'd love to be able to afford the 8tb of raid ssd's....

[fail_quail]

Still have some HDDs in my PC. Don't actually *need* them anymore as i've replaced my NAS with a much higher capacity one, but it's nice having a HDD as a dumping ground for temp files.

Current PC loadout:
512GB NVME (OS)
1TB NVME (Games)
320GB SSHD (Games)(just in there because i don't have any other use for the drive )
4TB HDD (Random stuff) (this drive partially failed in my old NAS, so only partitioned 3.5/4TB to avoid the bad part!)

[Saracen999]

I'd love to be able to afford the 8tb of raid ssd's....

For me, it's the same argument as when SSDs First came out - okay, they're very fast BUT does the benefit from that speed justify the cost/GB (or per TB) for the capacity in question?

What has changed is the capacity. We're no longer talking 40GB or maybe 80Gb, etc, but multiples of TB, and at what point the difference between cost/GB difference makes SSDs unjustifiable.

So really .... it's the ages-old tech story yet again. Speed, performance, capacity, resolution, etc marches an inexorably, but the closer you get to start of the art, the increase in cost per incremental improvement in those factors gets bigger until we either simply cannot afford it, or could but can't justify the cost.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

[ik9000]

inevitably just as we perfect one technology it is replaced by something new, that in the long term will better it, but take years to get there. So we ditch CRT TVs when they are the best performers except for size and weight, for inferior picture quality and ghosting, artefacts etc. Even now unless you really spend you don't get as good a picture for affordable mainstream models. Same with digital music vs physical media. Original download files were rubbish and lossy compared to CDs but portability won. Now streaming is king. Etc etc. Self driving autonomous cars will be the next. It will be years to hone those and I fear people will die as a result of that one. We are an odd bunch sometimes in the name of progress. We'll hit a point where HDD production is wound down despite SSD not being stable for LTS and people will get caught out as a result.

[spacein_vader]

inevitably just as we perfect one technology it is replaced by something new, that in the long term will better it, but take years to get there. So we ditch CRT TVs when they are the best performers except for size and weight, for inferior picture quality and ghosting, artefacts etc. Even now unless you really spend you don't get as good a picture for affordable mainstream models. Same with digital music. Original files were rubbish and lossy compared to CDs but portability won. Etc etc. Self driving autonomous cars will be the next. It will be years to hone those and I fear people will die as a result of that one. We are an odd bunch sometimes in the name of progress. We'll hit a point where HDD production is wound down despite SSD not being stable for LTS and people will get caught out as a result.

CDs are digital music.

[ik9000]

CDs are digital music.

fair comment I meant physical media as opposed to digital downloads etc

[edmundhonda]

We'll hit a point where HDD production is wound down despite SSD not being stable for LTS and people will get caught out as a result.

Anyone relying on HDDs for lts will get caught out at some point, too!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have pressed CDs going back to the mid 80's, the writable CDs are comparatively young at about 20 years old. I have yet to see any degradation. I have had a lifetime of being told my data won't last, so I spread it around over multiple media types and re-burn onto new media occasionally but actually have been pleasantly surprised so far.

There was a scare with SSDs some time ago based on a JEDEC flash specification table of retention vs temperature that was misinterpreted by the media. Recently I powered up my old E350 laptop that, now Raspberry Pi boards have overtaken it for performance, hadn't been used in over 2 years (since I last changed jobs where I used it quite a lot). From the scare stories it shouldn't have booted. It worked fine.

I think it is fair to say that we don't know the retention properties of a bunch of electrons escaping a floating gate vs stability of the miniscule soft magnetic domains of a modern HDD, both media change in basic operation fast enough that how our even 5 year old devices fared isn't really relevant. Some platters have a lubricant coating which could be like treacle after a decade, then there are things like motor bearings that might not spin after lack of use, Helium gas escaping causing extra drag on the motors. On the flip side, QLC flash, *shudder*, enough said.

Long term storage ideally needs to be actively powered up with data scrubbers checking the integrity of the data and re-building around corruption and failing drives onto spare storage. Hence I said I was looking at a sort of private cloud using erasure coding Ceph which in theory at least should be able to do all that but really wants to be running on at least 3 computers, which is a faff.

I have HDDs which are still useable after 10~15 years. I just powered on an external which has been in a drawer for 10 years and it was fine! Older flash apparently had better data retention properties,but newer stuff is getting worse and worse as its not really designed to be kept off for more than a year or two.

From my experience magnetic stoage like HDDs,tape,etc just is a better way to archive stuff. SSD failures modes tend to be catastrophic,whereas HDDs/tape/MO seems to have a more graceful failure mode,and data recovery is easier.

Writeable CDs are dye dependent - some of the ones from a few decades ago used higher quality dyes,and were generally written to in a slower way. A lot of the older ones from a few decades where made only a few specific places such as Japan,etc. As the discs got cheaper,you tended to find a number of the ones made in China,didn't last as long and had more problems being written to. This is because the dyes are organic and can start to degrade,especially if the cheaper disc use cheaper,less stable dyes,and the sandwiching process is done to a lower standard,ie,air can get in.

The only CDs/DVDs I used for my photo backup were top tier,archival discs,which were pricey and tended to be written to at 1X speed.

Pressed CDs tend to last longer,than those using dyes,but the main issue is potentially oxidation of the metal layer,due to the use of poor adhesives which causes disc delamination. This was noticed by the US government,which through entities such as the Library of Congress,have to archive culturally significant films,music,etc for prosperity. Another problem is in scientific research,where data sets need to be kept for quite a long time,so newer researchers can still have access to the original data behind papers. The problems even a decade ago it could be 10s~100s of GB data for certain experiments,especially a lot of those which used 4D imaging. It probably is much worse now.

The need for offline longterm data storage is still important,especially when you consider the backup data needs to survive scenarios of no power,etc. This is a consideration especially for Library of Congress. This is why tape and certain optical formats still exist to this day. This is one of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archival_Disc

[jm101]

In one pc yes - since it holds my 60TB video library .. but the primary pc is dual nvme with one quick ssd. I like the super fast boot and return to use after sleep. OH and oh so QUIET! Naturally we have a synology drive lan backup for safety. Next pc will be even faster .

[h4d3z]

Yeah, have 10TB in a NAS, that would be to expensive in SSD's

[wiz_drum]

As a backup for my SSD array. On my NAS as SSD's are still too expensive GB/$

[=assassin=]

I still have a 2TB Seagate drive in my main PC, but I intend to go SSD only for my next PC regarding internal drives, and maybe get an external mechanical drive for backups.

[goldstar0011]

I'm still rocking a couple of 500gb HDD's in my file server, am sure I'm playing russian roulette here so I don't use for anything too critical, everyting in the server is rust drives, I don't fancy the cost of moving to SSD. I have a spare 4tb HDD I need to fit but server is buried in a tight cupboard, need to clear space for me to get in

Gaming PC is all SSD and Nvme drives at least

[Presto86]

I have a 2TB hard drive which I just use for photos, video's and some steam games. 500GB M.2 for OS and a 1TB SSD for my main games.

[Euphonium]

I use lots of HDDs because SSDs are just too expensive for bulk storage.

My main PC has 2TB of SSDs (system & games, 1TB each) and 16TB of HDDs (4x4TB HDD) for documents, pics, & video

[Shante]

No, I decided to not go with any machinal drives for my next build.
Just an Nvme and 2 Sata SSD