HDD vs SSD for archiving/backups

Discussion
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Hi all, :wave:

a few days ago I created my monthly backup with clonezilla. I use an external HDD (TOSHIBA STORE.E ALU 2S) as a backup medium for that.
It´s 500 GB in size.

My backup went well but I noticed I´m running out of available disk space now. :slightly_frowning_face:
duf told me about it:

1 fuse device                                                                                         │
├──────────────────────┬────────┬────────┬───────┬───────────────────────────────┬─────────┬────────────┤
│ MOUNTED ON           │   SIZE │   USED │ AVAIL │              USE%             │ TYPE    │ FILESYSTEM │
├──────────────────────┼────────┼────────┼───────┼───────────────────────────────┼─────────┼────────────┤
│ /media/rosika/Volume │ 465.8G │ 462.5G │  3.3G │ [###################.]  99.3% │ fuseblk │ /dev/sdb1

I´m thinking of purchasing a new external hard drive to accomodate my backups.

Well, I´m not quite sure whether to look for an HDD or an SSD. :thinking:

Apart from the price (SSDs are more expensive, of course): what do you folks use as a backup medium: HHD or SSD :question:
Is any of them better suited for this purpose?

Thanks a lot for your opinions in advance.

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hard disk every time without doubt.
But bearing in mind your last question on moving disks when in use or connected, then ssd is safer as no moving parts.
Excluding the movement issue I guess i have more experience (due to age) with hard disks.
I would not just buy one feel safer with two and use them alternatively each week.
Also I never use backup eithere total or incremental as in the past discovered it was difficult to restore (in windows) one file or image.
Always recommend to my clients to make copies, Yes it can double stockage space but i can easily get just one file or image back if needed.

Guide to Backup and Restore Linux Systems with Timeshift.

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Hi Rosika,

As Paul said, as with me, with out a doubt a hard disk (HDD).
For me I use a HDD for 3 reasons.
1 - Cost.
2 - HDD are still very reliable.
3 - I have 2 copies of backup…

I don’t always make 2 copies at the same time, but again like @callpaul.eu said, I will sometimes
alternate the 2 backups. Back when I was working we use to call it a father and son backup. The son backup was the most recent, while the father backup was a bit older.

Take care,
Howard

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+1 for HDD.
It works.
If you calculate storage cost €/TB, HDD is waaay much more affordable.
Any (!!!) drive can die at any time, including SSD, according to Mr. Murphy, that drive is going to fail in that second, when it is the most painful possible.
I’ve seen SSD failing without any sign in prior.
So whatever you choose, have at least 2 pieces of it, the chance of failing 2 drives at once is almost negligible.
I also use different brands of the same size, so they are quite unlikely to fail the exact same time.

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I’ll have to side with the majority, Rosika. I use a portable external HDD for immediate backup, and I back that up to a NAS with 2 4T HDDs. The NAS was a gift from my son; it’s older but functional. And, just to cover my bases, I try to sync my portable with MEGA.nz from time to time.

SSDs are wonderful, but backing up is almost never an issue of speed. Older spinners take longer, but backing up is always done at leisure.

Cheers!

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I am sure I read somewhere that for long term archiving of data HDD is the only choice. Apparently memory in an SSD can lose its contents just with age for any period over about 1 year. HDD can lose its memory too, but it takes much longer, like 10 years plus.

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Agree, plus backing up to a device connected by USB, you are limited by the speed of the USB
port.

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Hi to all of you, :wave:

Wow, I´m impressed my your many asnwers. Thanks a lot. :heart:

That´s what I call a clear recommendation. HDD seems to be the definitive winner .

@callpaul.eu :

@nevj :

Well, that shouldn´t be a problem. There´s certainly no movement while doing my clonezilla backups.
Besides: I still use the HDD on a daily basis as my (Linux Lite) daily driver is installed on it. :wink:

That´s a great suggestion. Thanks, Paul.
I may use my present Toshiba HDD and the to-be-purchased-one and alternate using them for backups.

Thanks also for providing the link regarding timeshift.

@easyt50 :

Thanks Howard.
Yes, to me cost is a factor, too. I was already leaning towards HDD but still wanted to collect some opinions other than mine.

I will take this to heart.

Quite right. My recent backups take up more time than they used to.
Plus: I have just USB2.0 ports available.

@kovacslt :

That´s certainly some good advice.

The reason why I was taking SSDs into consideration at all was about the method of delivery.

As SSDs have no moving parts at all I thought: They could be delivered in a safer way than HDDs when I choose to order one of them via amazon.
I may be wrong here… :thinking:

Price seems to be the defining factor to me after all.
Everything has become so expensive nowadays.
Even my grandpa (my mum´s dad) used to say: “Olyan nagy a drágaság hogy kan ich nimi kabát kafa”). :wink:

@berninghausen :

Thanks for providing your opinion, too.

Quite so. And, as I said, I only have USB2.0 available, so I wouldn´t be able to take advantage of the gain of speed after all.

@nevj :

Thanks Neville. That aspect was new to me. But it´s good to know.

Well. HDD is the clear winner then.

Thank you so much for your help, everybody. You´re really great. :+1:

Many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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Good to know we all think the same in this

Just to confirm there are no moving parts in ssd and as pointed out they can have issues over time.

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Hi Paul, :wave:

yes, the verdict was unanimous. I´m impressed. :smiley:

I wonder why there´s a tendency to produce laptops with SSDs built in as their primary drive.

Well, I know speed may be the reason. No arguing about that.
But laptops seem to come with SSDs with smaller capacity than HDDs. That´s certainly because of their price.

It´s still remarkable though that I installed a Linux OS on two new laptops in the not too distant past (for some acquaintance of mine):

Both came at a price of about 300 Euros.
One had a 256 GB SSD, the other sported a 1 GB HDD. :wink:

Cheers from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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I will take the opposite position: SSD’s are a much better choice as backup devices. I’ve had quite a few HDD’s die over the years but only one SSD failure. Though I didn’t keep count I believe I’ve had roughly the same number of each type. The most recent HDD death was yesterday when an external HDD backup drive failed without warning.

SSD’s do cost more but have come way down in price lately. Yesterday I got a 1TB Samsung external SSD for $95 US. Plugged into a USB-3 port write speed was 440 MB/sec.

SSD’s can fail without warning so it’s wise to have two backups.

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Most modern laptops come with ssd for a good reason. SPEED. without that windows would run even slower than it does.
There is also the issue of size, weight, power and heat that hard disks need to be taken into account.
I had several early ssd laptops come in with 32 gb ssd where windows only just fitted and when there was a update, no space to do it so written off, or install linux. But very thin boxes.
New laptops come sealed with no upgrades or changable parts so memory is soldered onto the motherboard cutting cost of connection parts. It stops you throw it away. Cannot even remove or change the battery

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Hi again, :wave:

@don.karon :

Thanks for your opinion, Don. You´re the first one to suggest using SSDs.
Well, one has to view the matter from all angles.
Your experience has been different from those of the other folks.
Interesting.

I totally agree. :smiling_face:

@callpaul.eu :

A already thought as much. Thanks for your confirmation, Paul.

O.K., I wouldn´t have thought of that, I have to admit.

That´s certainly a sad state of affairs. :frowning_face:

Thanks for the information.

Cheers from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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Yes, I was surprised with the last laptop that I purchased. The battery was not
removable.
It also had a 256 GB M2 SSD and an open slot for another M2 SSD. I forgot to look at the memory because it had 16 GB of ram. More then enough for Linux. :laughing:

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I use full size hard disks and buy cases that have a fan. I use timeshift. I am running 4 desktops 3 with Mint 21.3 and 1 Debian 12 LMDE. 2 machines are dual boot, 1with win 10 and 1 with win 11. I won’t use the small drives that are sold as backup drives as they don’t have any cooling.
Next time you get a chance to look at a hard drive check the g force they can tolerate if they are not powered. I seem to remember something like 365 gs.

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Thanks for the tip - just looked it up… Where has this been all my life (or my Linux / UNIX life)?

Sorry - I can’t add any value to this conversation, as I don’t do backups of my systems… I have RAIDZ+ on my NAS (Note : RAID is not a backup solution! My TrueNAS has 4 x 4 TB spinning platter HDDs - but - boots off a 2.5" SATA SSD). I should, but I’m too lazy…

All my “volatile” data (documents, images, shell scripts) has multiple copies across my selfhosted cloud storage solution. This also (where I’ve enabled “keep deleted files”) keeps 30 days worth of changes to files, documents etc…

So - if I lose my system - it’s a PITA, but for me - it’s always quicker to rebuild my O/S from scratch, than to troubleshoot hairpulling technical issues… and I don’t dual boot… So if I need to rebuild my desktop O/S, within about 2-3 hours - I’m fully operational again, once I’ve finished syncing ~250 GB from my cloud solution (Resilio Sync) - I’m ready to go…

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Hello, my friends,
I’m lost on this long thread, so I’ll give my opinion in relation to the title.

SSDs: They are excellent, I strongly recommend swapping HDD in PCs/laptops for SSD, since they improve power consumption, write/read speed, access, etc., but they should not be used for backup, because SSDs record the date in memory and it is not a safe method to have data stored for long periods.

HHDs: are still the best solution for storing backup data. One of the problems that sometimes happens is that the SATA controllers of the HDDs in the external enclosures, which are the same for external the SSDs, start giving errors and the first step is to change the controller, which is easy: since the SATA controller belongs to the external you can try it with another external enclosure.

IMG_20240506_085750
IMG_20240506_085750915×602 84.6 KB

Image from AliExprees

If they are 3.5" HDD disks, the external box has a power supply, which is also usually external. That’s one more thing to test if you ever get an error with a 3.5" HDD disk.

Example of 3.5" enclosure with external power supply:

IMG_20240506_090629
IMG_20240506_0906291080×915 100 KB

Image from AliExpress

Thirdly, test the USB cable that connects to the external enclosure, because, for example, in both 2.5" disks and SSDs, the USB cable gives the power supply to the external the external disks and are “cables snd cables…” And sometimes the cables start to have more internal connections, even breaking the internal cables or the solder joints next to the plugs and suggesting that the problem is in the external connections, which may not be true.

Any disk is liable to give errors or break down, but HDDs are the most suitable for backups and, in a very personal opinion, 3.5" HDDs are more effective than 2.5" HDDs, but that’s a very personal opinion.

In my case, I use 3.5" HDDs for long-term backups, but for the rest of backups I use 3.5" HDDs. HDDs, 2.5" HDDs, SSDs, flash drives, i e., a miscellany of disks that I use for backups, so, as they say in PT, “do as I say, not as I do”.

Jorge

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Hi again, :wave:

thanks a lot for your input. :heart:

@daniel.m.tripp :

I´m glad you like it, Dan.
I was inspired to use duf by this page, which lists quite a collection of some really good “Modern Alternatives to Some of the Classic Linux Commands”. :wink:

No need to be sorry, Dan. Your input is always very informative and interesting.
Thanks for portraying your personal use case.

@Tech_JA :

That´s quite a lot of effort you put into providing some valuable information with respect to SSD/HDD. Thanks so much, Jorge. :heart:

Thanks also for the links. One of them is even in German. :wink:
I´ll look them up, of course.

Yes, I think so, too. So you agree with the opinion of most of the users.
I´ll go for a HDD then.

The additional information regarding SATA controllers being part of the external disks (in their enclosures) was indeed new to me.
Well, I’ve never looked into it in detail, so that´s good to know.Thanks, Jorge.

You seem to be using quite a collection of different backup media. That´s really impressive.

Thanks again (also for providing the images.). :smiley:

As I made up my mind to opt for an HDD as backup medium, that´s settled then.
I think I´ll go for a 2.5" one with 1 TB in size. That should be good enough for me.

All the best to all of you and many greetings from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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@Jim_Hurley:

Thanks Jim for the additional information.

That´s new information to me. Thank you for bringing up this point.
Much appreciated.

Cheers from Rosika :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi Rosika , Old SATA HDDs fitted inside low cost external SATA enclosures are good enough for your intended purpose.
I get the HDDs from dated equipment which I re-use with a new SSD , like the desktop PC from 2010 I write this message on ( running Linux Mint)
These external SATA enclosures are low cost from Aliexpress or Banggood .
Recently I acquired a defective M$oft Windows desktop PC ,but with a good HDD Put the disk inside an external SATA enclosure and erased the disk with Gparted followed by reformating FAT32. It is now used as a data disk.
If you have access to old equipment this is an effective way to get a reliable external back-up device .
For external storage devices an SSD is not necessary.
An SSD is best for running an operating system .

Good luck with your selection

Frank in County Wicklow Ireland

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