Suggestions for a dependable storage drive

Scannerman · Jul 10, 2026

badrobot said:
I've been recovering data from dying HDDs for the past decade with my favorite tool MiniTool Power Data Recovery software

Good choice! I use MiniTool too!

Marie SWE · Jul 10, 2026

Scannerman said:
once that drive starts clicking the idea is to replace it immediately.

I agree.

I also want to add.. if you really lucky and its the click of death.. it have been a tiny spike or overload so the TVS diode went up in smoke.. that one can be replaced.. or if you just plan on recover the data once... just remove the diode.

HeavyHemi · Jul 10, 2026

Anyone want to check out my thyrector?

Scannerman · Jul 11, 2026

Marie SWE said:
I agree.
I also want to add.. if you really lucky and its the click of death.. it have been a tiny spike or overload so the TVS diode went up in smoke.. that one can be replaced.. or if you just plan on recover the data once... just remove the diode.

But sometimes that infamous click of death means it's a bad actuator or bad heads and if that should be the case the drive will require some serious surgery.

Marie SWE · Jul 11, 2026

Scannerman said:
But sometimes that infamous click of death means it's a bad actuator or bad heads and if that should be the case the drive will require some serious surgery.

So true, so true... its also the silent death... It is so many things that can go wrong with moving parts. I'm kind of surprised it dont happen more often.

I worked at a computer company that did data recovery back in the 00's.. So it was interesting to learn all tricks you can do to get the data out from damaged drives.

cheaterslick · Jul 11, 2026

Scannerman said:
I recommend staying in the habit of keeping it turned off until you need it.

It's called "cold storage". Keeping the drives cold and turned off until you need them. That applies to both SMR and CMR drives. Makes no difference. I only turn them on when I need to copy something on or off of it.

Like @MisterEd up above, I have a mixed bag of drives that are new and not so new. Mostly WD since they seemed to have been so reliable in the past. I've only experienced 1 seriously failure in the last 10 years doing it this way. But that's only my experience. Other people's may vary.

The last thing I ever want to do is leave an external drive connected all the time. That's gonna be a sure case of eventual failure.

Marie SWE · Jul 11, 2026

cheaterslick said:
It's called "cold storage". Keeping the drives cold and turned off until you need them. That applies to both SMR and CMR drives. Makes no difference. I only turn them on when I need to copy something on or off of it.

Like @MisterEd up above, I have a mixed bag of drives that are new and not so new. Mostly WD since they seemed to have been so reliable in the past. I've only experienced 1 seriously failure in the last 10 years doing it this way. But that's only my experience. Other people's may vary.

The last thing I ever want to do is leave an external drive connected all the time. That's gonna be a sure case of eventual failure.

HDD is way superior on long term cold storage then SSD's.. So if people plan on putting a disk on a shelf for years and years.. go HDD.
and this is a topic in it self thogh.

I have had 3 or 4 HDD died on me... but i have also had over 300+ HDD's so its low percentage... I have had 1 SSD failing on me and i have only had 8 SSD's so that is higher percentage.

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 11, 2026

Marie SWE said:
I have had 3 or 4 HDD died on me... but i have also had over 300+ HDD's so its low percentage... I have had 1 SSD failing on me and i have only had 8 SSD's so that is higher percentage.

Statistics are wonderful, you can make them say whatever you want. :lmao:

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 11, 2026

badrobot said:
If you say so.
I don't know why you are so interested in arguing with me instead of helping the OP. I have what you have. I am not a 9 yr old.

You seem to be pretty interested in arguing with me as well.

Seems a lot like the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe we can just agree to disagree.

Marie SWE · Jul 11, 2026

gunrunnerjohn said:
Statistics are wonderful, you can make them say whatever you want.

I know.

My SSD died do to heavy writing so it was me that killed it, so i have gone back to HDD for that.
Is so fun they say an SSD have sooo long life span on writes and can now compete with HDD's.. i had a Micron 256GB and i killed it in two years.

cheaterslick · Jul 11, 2026

Marie SWE said:
but i have also had over 300+ HDD's so its low percentage...

300+ ? -lol, I've only had about 20 - 25 (both internal & external) in the last 25 years or so. A tiny amount compared to you. Good computing practices and mostly luck have carried me through. And yes, I do mirror what I have so there are at least 2 copies of what I want to save.

Marie SWE · Jul 11, 2026

cheaterslick said:
300+ ? -lol, I've only had about 20 - 25 (both internal & external) in the last 25 years or so. A tiny amount compared to you. Good computing practices and mostly luck have carried me through. And yes, I do mirror what I have so there are at least 2 copies of what I want to save.

I'm not a normal computer user.

Edit: ~~My first server i had back in 1998 had 19HDD's~~. i remembered wrong.. My first PC that acted as a server in 98 had 10 drives.. three IDE and 7 Scsi.. my second server and my first real server in 2000 had 19 disks, Three pools 5+7+7 all Scsi... . now i have a server storage of 24HDD's.. Then i can start counting all computers i have both in retro collection and those i use in almost daily usage... So its not so strange of have had over 300+ disks since the late 80's.

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 11, 2026

I still remember the bad old days with the ancient interface options, MFM & RLL, most of the electronics were in the controller and not on the disk drive.

Marie SWE said:
I'm not a normal computer user.
Edit: ~~My first server i had back in 1998 had 19HDD's~~. i remembered wrong.. My first PC that acted as a server in 98 had 10 drives.. three IDE and 7 Scsi.. my second server and my first real server in 2000 had 19 disks, Three pools 5+7+7 all Scsi... . now i have a server storage of 24HDD's.. Then i can start counting all computers i have both in retro collection and those i use in almost daily usage... So its not so strange of have had over 300+ disks since the late 80's.

Gad, the most I've had in one machine as I recall is six drives, that was only because they were fairly small capacity drives. This machine only has four drives, three 2TB SSD drives, and one 4TB HDD. My backup machine has the same configuration.

I have a couple of USB 4TB SSD drives as air-gapped backup, they only get plugged in alternately every other week for a full backup of all drives on the machine.

Marie SWE · Jul 11, 2026

gunrunnerjohn said:
I still remember the bad old days with the ancient interface options, MFM & RLL, most of the electronics were in the controller and not on the disk drive.

Gad, the most I've had in one machine as I recall is six drives, that was only because they were fairly small capacity drives. This machine only has four drives, three 2TB SSD drives, and one 4TB HDD. My backup machine has the same configuration.

I have a couple of USB 4TB SSD drives as air-gapped backup, they only get plugged in alternately every other week for a full backup of all drives on the machine.

I still have my first PC up and running a Commodore PC10-II made in 1985 but i got it in 1987 and that one do have two MFM 10MB disks and one 5.25 floppy... and.. i have the ram expansion card of 384kb so i got the extreme 1024 kilobytes of Ram .

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 11, 2026

Marie SWE said:
I still have my first PC up and running a Commodore PC10-II made in 1985 but i got it in 1987 and that one do have two MFM 10MB disks and one 5.25 floppy... and.. i have the ram expansion card of 384kb so i got the extreme 1024 kilobytes of Ram .

I no longer have my first machine, I build it in 1976. It was a home-brew 8080 based machine that based on an early S-100 chassis and wire-wrapped my own processor, memory, and floppy & HDD controllers. I also had to write my own BIOS. The display was the LSI ADM-3. I did have an HDD drive long before most home computers even considered the idea. The hardest peripheral to source back then was a printer.

Marie SWE · Jul 11, 2026

gunrunnerjohn said:
I no longer have my first machine, I build it in 1976. It was a home-brew 8080 based machine that based on an early S-100 chassis and wire-wrapped my own processor, memory, and floppy & HDD controllers. I also had to write my own BIOS. The display was the LSI ADM-3. I did have an HDD drive long before most home computers even considered the idea. The hardest peripheral to source back then was a printer.

I never had an older computer then my PC10-II and as i was born in the mid 70's i think i hadn't been able to tweak with computers then.

gunrunnerjohn · Jul 11, 2026

Marie SWE said:
I never had an older computer then my PC10-II and as i was born in the mid 70's i think i hadn't been able to tweak with computers then.

I was born slightly earlier than that. :lmao:

I started my computer career with IBM in the 60's.

Marie SWE · Jul 11, 2026

gunrunnerjohn said:
I was born slightly earlier than that. I started my computer career with IBM in the 60's.

We are a mile off topic now... its fun talking old computers..
Perhaps this forum need a computer retro thread.

But to go back to topic..
if you have a pool with drives.. then Raid 5/6 or ZFS z1/z2 is best for space and still keep redundancy.
Otherwise for single drive usage, invest in a hotswap bay and use regular Sata HDD's for backup instead of USB drives.. better cooling and better speed.

cereberus · Jul 11, 2026

gunrunnerjohn said:
Statistics are wonderful, you can make them say whatever you want.

95% of all statistics are made up.

cheaterslick · Jul 11, 2026

Marie SWE said:
I'm not a normal computer user.

Ah well that explains it.

Marie SWE said:
Edit: ~~My first server i had back in 1998 had 19HDD's~~. i remembered wrong.. My first PC that acted as a server in 98 had 10 drives.. three IDE and 7 Scsi.. my second server and my first real server in 2000 had 19 disks, Three pools 5+7+7 all Scsi... . now i have a server storage of 24HDD's.. Then i can start counting all computers i have both in retro collection and those i use in almost daily usage... So its not so strange of have had over 300+ disks since the late 80's.

I wouldn't want your electric bills. . .

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