HDD vs SSD for archiving/backups

[Tech_JA (Jorge Augusto)]

Hi Rosika,
Thanks for your kind words

@Rosika

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

This is called being disorganized

Please read to what Frank wrote, I totally agree with him: you don’t need to buy an HDD with a branded case or something very expensive. If you have HDDs at home, just buy an enclosure depending on the HDD you have: any USB3 to SATA enclosure will fit any HDD or SSD except that. If you use the 3.5" HDD the case has to have an external power supply, because of the HDD’s power consumption, but it can also handle the 2.5" HDD and SSD.

I’ll tell you something else: you don’t even need a box, you just need a USB3 to SATA cable, example:

• For HDD 2.5" and SSD (it’s just an example):

Image from AliExpress

Or for HDD 3.5", HDD 2.5", SSD (it’s just an example):

Image from AliExprees

If you don’t have a disk, you can buy it at a local store, but you only need to store the disk, you just have a USB3 SATA interface.
That’s my suggestion, of course, purely and simply personal.

For example, one of my external "enclosures " is a docking station that can hold all my HDDs and SSDs and I only store the disks themselves:

Image from aquario.pt

But for the sake of mobility and dealing only with the laptop, I bought a USB3 SATA cable just like the one I mentioned above:

Image from AliExpress

What I have written are suggestions in “thousands” of suggestions.

You just have to follow and use the one you like best.

Jorge

[kovacslt (László Kovács)]

I have 2 pieces of Sharkoon docks:

SATA QuickPort XT USB 3.0 - sharkoon.com

They accept both 3,5" and 2,5" drives, work great, I’m happy with them.

[easyt50 (Howard)]

@Tech_JA

bought a USB3 SATA cable

For external 2.5 HDD or SSD. Yes, having a spare one or two on hand is very good. More then once, I had the controller go bad on an enclosure HDD. I removed the HDD and was able to use the disk with the USB cable / controller.

[callpaul.eu (Paul)]

My experiance shows that the box is a better option and my preferred choice.

For a time i carried a cable but had bought it cheap and discovered the flexability caused poor connections so quite often failed.

Now i take disks or computers back to my workshop where the box stays in place and its just the hard disk to plug in, also its a better quality box with connections that have past the test of time and use.

[Rosika (Rosika Schreck)]

Hi all,

sorry I couldn´t reply earlier.

Thanks a lot for your new suggestions.

@wicklowham:

@wicklowham

Old SATA HDDs fitted inside low cost external SATA enclosures are good enough for your intended purpose.

I see. That´s a whole new aspect to me.

Sounds interesting, but I´d need to have a spare HDD lying around somewhere.
But actually I don´t. So I´d have to buy an “internal” HDD and an external SATA enclosure or a USB-to-SATA cable, I guess.

I´ll look into it and do some calculations. Thanks again, Frank.

@Tech_JA :

@Tech_JA

If you have HDDs at home

Yes, Jorge. You´re perfectly right. But (see my answer to Frank) I´d have to buy an internal HDD first. I have none of those lying around.

@Tech_JA

If you use the 3.5" HDD the case has to have an external power supply, because of the HDD’s power consumption, but it can also handle the 2.5" HDD and SSD.

That´s interesting. That would be able to handle all scenarios then.

Thanks for providing the pictures, Jorge.
It´s good to see the parts we´re talking about as well. It really helps.

A docking station seems to be good idea. I like that.

@kovacslt :

Thanks for the link, László.
I looked it up and the Sharkoon dock seems to be a professional device indeed. Great.

@easyt50 :

Seems like a USB3-to-SATA cable is good to have. It helped you save the disk, Howard.
Thanks to you as well.

@callpaul.eu :

Thanks, Paul, for telling us about your practical experience.

Yes, a box seems to be the professional device to employ for the scenario we´ve been discussing.

A big thank you to all of you for the new suggestions.
It´ll give me something to think about before actually buying a new disk for my backups.

Many greetings from Rosika

P.S.:

Hang on for a second.
Taking a look at the sharkoon site @kovacslt was referring to I noticed that the disk would be located in a vertical position.

I think that´s no problem for SSDs, but what about HDDs

Can the sharkoon product handle them as well?
And if so, wouldn´t it matter that they are positioned vertically?

I normally use my external HDD lying horizontally on any surface.

[Tech_JA (Jorge Augusto)]

Hi Rosika,

@Rosika

So I´d have to buy an “internal” HDD and an external SATA enclosure or a USB-to-SATA cable, I guess

It’s not a USB-to-SATA cable, because they can sell an USB2-to-SATA.
I know it’s confusing, because there are USB2 and USB3 cables…
If you buy it, buy a USB3-to-SATA cable, so you don’t lose speed when transferring data to the external disk

@Rosika

I think that´s no problem for SSDs, but what about HDDs

No problem at all. If you’re going to use a 3.5" HDD, the dock must have a power supply and, as the disks you’re using go horizontal, you have to make sure they don’t get hit, but that’s normal for all HDDs, even when they’re inside PCs or laptops.

And as a curiosity, with 4 SATA spots for 3.5" HDD, 2.5" or SSD, you can even clone disks without being connected to the PC?

Image from AliExpress

It’s not advice to buy, it’s just one of many examples of vertical docks. There are some many…

Jorge

[callpaul.eu (Paul)]

Its not a problem for hard disks to be vertical, Although most towers have the disks flat just like laptops the compact desktops from hp had them vertically mounted for years.
My own external box is just like the image shown and never had an issue with either small or large hard disks.

I was so tempted to say your word documents come out in Chinese, written vertically but my humour does not alway translate easy, so it would not be funny, especially if you have to turn your monitor vertically also to see them… ha ha ha

J
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[wicklowham (Frank)]

@callpaul.eu

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

That’s why I only use “older” equipment such that Storage and Memory devices can be easily changed .
My latest acquisition is an AD2011 Apple MacBook Pro ,bought for less than equiv US $200 . Following the HDD replacement by a 256GB SSD the machine now runs LM21 Victoria very well and with all the apps I am interested in installed the installed capacity of the SSD is about 25%. Since 2015 I use SSDs on 2 desktops and 2 laptops . Even the low-cost units from online Chinese suppliers have sofar never failed.
But I understand that it is always best to use SSDs with a solid spare capacity . It seems that if any internal “cells” (if that is the right word) fail ,spare cells will take over .
The original 500 GB HDD of the Apple MacBook Pro has been fitted inside an external USB3 enclosure and reformated FAT32 serving as an external data disk.

Recent event : Last week when at a local recycle centre a lady happily gave me a visibly defective desktop PC she intended to dump. When taking it to bits it still had a good 3.5inch 1TB HDD which I reformated (FAT32) with Gparted and can now serve as a DATA or BACKUP disk ( in a docking station)
Also the RAM modules have been rescued (not tested as yet).

I would recommend any ITSFOSS follower to consider buying a docking station.
The one I have is an older type which can accommodate an IDE and a SATA drive at the same time . The later units are usually for 2 SATA drives.
A docking station is normally setup for cloning disks which can be very useful.

Frank in County Wicklow Ireland

[nevj (Neville Jackson)]

@wicklowham

3.5inch 1TB HDD which I reformated (FAT32)

Hi Frank,
Why are you reformatting to FAT32?
Not very suitable for Linux. Are you running Windows? Even for Win , would not NTFS be a better choice?
I bet you have a good reason. I just cant see it.
Regards
Neville

[callpaul.eu (Paul)]

Great use of older technology rather than just scrap, thats just what i do to keep costs down for my clients. Sell second hard reconditioned especially memory which rare to fail.

Yes i agree fat 32 is not wonderful for linux although it works to a limit on small disks when you get to 1 tb it fails to address correctly and gives strange errors. I did this myself forgetting the limits.

[kovacslt (László Kovács)]

I use since a while
The position itself does not matter for the HDD either.

[kovacslt (László Kovács)]

FAT32 is very common, so it can be used with other devices too.
However, there’s the 4GB filesize limit…

I use may external disks exclusively with Linux, so I have them ext4 formatted.
Some flash drives (when I need to give someone to use on a system I don’t know…) I format to ExFAT, that is commonly useable by other systems too, and does not have the 4GB limit.

[wicklowham (Frank)]

Hi Neville , it seems FAT32 is OK for a DATA only disk used with any Linux system , although NTFS or ect4 would be needed for a disk containing a Linux operation system .
USB sticks when purchased always come with FAT32 and directly accept data from and to a Linux system , hence my routine for data only transfers . But I agree with your comment.

Regards

Frank in County Wicklow Ireland

[clatterfordslim (mark)]

I for one don’t do system backups. I never keep anything important on my computer warranting such a thing, but everything like Linux Notes that I have taken over the years, deb files, AppImages, scripts for opening web content as an app, instead of cluttering my browser with shortcuts, my own system theme, icon theme and everything else Linux related are kept on three different drives.

One is my storage drive M.2 drive 2TB and two external USB 3.0 drives, both hold a total of 4TB. Western Digital Element drives, that I reformatted to NTFS, as FAT32 is fine for UEFI or EFI BIOS’s, formatting USB sticks for Linux installation ISO’s on.

I use Windows 11 too for triple A gaming not just old titles. So having the files I need to hand when something goes awry or wrong in Windows 11 is a must.

These USB Drives are spinning ones, though think they are a hybrid half SSD and half Spinning. So it saves cache file like a SSD does. Best practice I learned after losing all my music data is make as many backups as possible, store it away from your computer altogether.

Any updated files or anything else to keep, just add it to same drives. That way always got a backup in case of one day a Solar Flare should hit us and wipe every computer out on the planet. Least if computer gets fried I still have backups, though if Solar Flare did hit the world, would not be able to use a computer for at least a hundred years, as it would knock us back to the 1800’s.

[Rosika (Rosika Schreck)]

Hi all,

thank you very much for your many responses.

@Tech_JA :

@Tech_JA

If you buy it, buy a USB3-to-SATA cable, so you don’t lose speed when transferring data to the external disk

O.K., that´s good to know.
Although I have just USB2.0 ports on my PC available it surely can´t hurt to use a USB3-to-SATA cable. Thanks for mentioning it, Jorge.

@Tech_JA

No problem at all

Good to know, Jorge.

Thanks also for the image you provided. Yes, positioning the HDDs vertically seems to be fine then.

@callpaul.eu :

@callpaul.eu

Its not a problem for hard disks to be vertical,

Thanks to you as well.
The thought had entered my mind as I was thinking of the actuator moving around when the HDD is in action.
Well, seems verticality doesn´t affect its functioning, then. Great.

@callpaul.eu

My own external box is just like the image shown and never had an issue with either small or large hard disks.

Thanks for confirming that from your experience.

@wicklowham :

@wicklowham

But I understand that it is always best to use SSDs with a solid spare capacity . It seems that if any internal “cells” (if that is the right word) fail ,spare cells will take over .

That´s good to know.
By “spare” capactity you mean buying an SSD with a larger capacity than needed, I guess.

@wicklowham

I would recommend any ITSFOSS follower to consider buying a docking statio

Thanks for your clear recommendation, Frank.

@nevj :

Thanks for your comments, Neville.

@kovacslt :

@kovacslt

The position itself does not matter for the HDD either.

Thanks for your confirmation as well.

@clatterfordslim :

Thanks for depicting your setup so vividly. Very Impressive.

@all:

Thank you again for your comments, tips and recommendations.
They´re much appreciated.

Many greetings from Rosika

[Tech_JA (Jorge Augusto)]

Hi Rosika,

@Rosika

Although I have just USB2.0 ports on my PC available

This is just my opinion: the prices of USB2-to-SATA and USB3-to SATA are practically the same, even the docks are USB3. I don’t think it’s worth investing in USB2

Jorge

[Rosika (Rosika Schreck)]

Thanks, Jorge.

Your opinion is highly valued.
And you´re right, of course.

Cheers from Rosika

[easyt50 (Howard)]

Hi Rosika,

@Rosika

By “spare” capactity you mean buying an SSD with a larger capacity than needed

No need to worry about “spares”. All HDD and SSD already has the spares built into the device. The controller for the device will automatically allocate the spares when needed.

Not sure about SSD’s, but a HDD has a counter in the Smart data for reallocated sectors.
The reallocated sectors are the “spares”.

Have a good day.
Howard

[Rosika (Rosika Schreck)]

Hi Howard,

thanks for the explanation .

@easyt50

All HDD and SSD already has the spares built into the device.The controller for the device will automatically allocate the spares when needed.

I actually didn´t know that. That´s really good to know.

I just took a look at :

sudo smartctl -A -d sat /dev/sdb
[...]
D# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
[...]
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
[...]

Looks good then.
Now I know how to interpret this line.

Thanks again and cheers from Rosika

[kovacslt (László Kovács)]

@Rosika

I have just USB2.0

USB 2.0 can provide less power. So look for something that has an external power supply to power the SATA device. Otherwise, a “hungry” HDD may not spin up, which require more power than the USB 2.0 can provide.