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Solid State drives VS Optical Disk drives....which one is more reliable/lasts longer?

Which type of drive lasts longer and is more reliable?

  • Solid State drive

    Votes: 116 84.7%

  • Optical disk drive

    Votes: 21 15.3%
  • Total voters
    137
Isamu

Isamu

Member
Dec 18, 2017
1,577
Downtown Rave City
I've moved all my anime and movies from my external HDD to two internal SSDs. It's great having media on my SSDs but I was listening to a podcast and one guy was saying how SSDs are risky, in that once they fry or burnout, there is basically NO WAY to retrieve data off them, whereas with typical Hard Disk drives retrieving data is fairly easy. Can anyone verify this claim and what has your experience been with SSDs VS optical drives for long term storage?

Which type of drive would you choose to store your media if space or money was not a factor or concern?
 
Last edited:
nsilvias

nsilvias

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,702
ssds are more durable than hdd but if they die you are fucked. drop an hdd and youre fucked, drop an ssd and it doesnt even matter.

hdd are for long term storage of important stuff imo like pictures and documents but even then if you dont have multiple backups your files dont really exist.

hdd arent optical btw they are mechanical
 
bionic77

bionic77

Member
Oct 25, 2017
30,888
I would guess optical is more durable but I would always take SSD for the speed and back it up.
 
chadskin

chadskin

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,013
An optical disk drive reads and writes CD/DVD/Blu-ray, what you mean is a hard disk drive which is a magnetic, not an optical medium.

On-topic: Retrieving data off a failed HDD costs thousands of dollars and is really only a viable option if the data is extremely important. In either case, if you're worried about data loss make a backup(s).
 

Lightus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,135
Optical HDDs? Only HDDs I've heard of are magnetic. When I hear optical I think CDs. Have I just never heard about optical HDDs?

Also yeah technically your best bet is the cloud. Really any drives can fail, just replace them over the years and you'll be fine.
 
Akira86

Akira86

Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,585
optical is a disc drive with laser read medium

they tend to be read only except in the writing phase, which is by necessity a rare occurrence.
 
TaySan

TaySan

SayTan
Member
Dec 10, 2018
31,385
Tulsa, Oklahoma
SSD drives are more durable, but a lot more expensive for equivalent space of an HDD drive.
Use an HDD for stuff like Movies/music/picture storage.
 
ShadowAUS

ShadowAUS

Member
Feb 20, 2019
2,105
Australia
This is a really concise overview of the HDD vs SSD issue - https://therevisionist.org/reviews/ssd-vs-hdd-one-reliable/

The most important thing though whether HDD or SSD is having redundant copies if the data is at all important.
In consumer world precise statistics, failure modes and recovery chances aren't really crucial parameters. What is actually important is that both can fail irrecoverably and without prior signals. If you want specifics – then SSD probably has higher risk of complete irrecoverable failure, while HDDs often can be restored at considerable expense.

So instead of relying on single part not failing you should use reasonable backup scheme, like the ever-so-popular 3-2-1:
  1. At least 3 copies of data.
  2. On at least 2 different mediums.
  3. At least one off-site.
First point ensures that you are protected against only moderately unlikely problem with both original and copy – and so that if one copy fails you still have peace of mind as your data is still backed up.

Second point aims to protect you against mass failure affecting given storage type. For example a power surge killing all the hard drives in an NAS – but your disconnected external HDD copy is still fine.

Last point is basically disaster protection – so that your data is safe in case of fire, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes and so on.

This probably rightfully sounds like an overkill, but you have to weight how much your data is worth to you.
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Deleted member 18944

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,944
Isamu said:
I've moved all my anime and movies from my external optical HDD to two internal SSDs. It's great having media on my SSDs but I was listening to a podcast and one guy was saying how SSDs are risky, in that once they fry or burnout, there is basically NO WAY to retrieve data off them, whereas with typical optical drives retrieving data is fairly easy. Can anyone verify this claim and what has your experience been with SSDs VS optical drives for long term storage?

Which type of drive would you choose to store your media if space or money was not a factor or concern?
Click to expand...
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From an IT professionals perspective, it doesn't matter what you use as long as you are reliably backing up to a desperate storage instance because both HDD and SSD are going to fail at one time or another.

Use cloud storage if you can, and if you can't, build a NAS with SSDs that back up to a separate, less used NAS.
 
Evolution of Metal

Evolution of Metal

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,960
nsilvias said:
op doesnt want to get arrested
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low-G

low-G

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,144
Those optical hard drives are notoriously broken. Can't even read the magnetism with the laser.

Maybe OP's talking about burning disks? I'd trust a SSD over a bunch of stored DVDs. I'd trust a HDD over a bunch of stored DVDs.
 
Tapiozona

Tapiozona

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
2,253
from what the internet tells me, a HDD is better for long te storage and a SSD is better for regular use.

The poll here seems to completely disagree though. Not sure who to believe or is it a case of people voting without understanding op's question.
 

t26

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
4,543
low-G said:
Those optical hard drives are notoriously broken. Can't even read the magnetism with the laser.


Maybe OP's talking about burning disks? I'd trust a SSD over a bunch of stored DVDs. I'd trust a HDD over a bunch of stored DVDs.
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I would still trust my Taiyo Yuden over any hard drive
 
Jarmel

Jarmel

The Jackrabbit Always Wins
Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,296
New York
Burned disks will likely last longer than a SSD but you don't want to use that storage format for large amounts of storage.
 
The Real Abed

The Real Abed

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,720
Pennsylvania
HDD for long term and mass storage. SSD for stuff you are going to be accessing all the time. For stuff like large video files HDD is still fine because it's cheap. Whichever you use though always have redundancies. Always buy two. Keep a copy of everything on both. At least two.
 
PHOENIXZERO

PHOENIXZERO

Member
Oct 29, 2017
12,061
Burned discs have a limited lifespan and it's not nearly as long as they tried to market it as and backing up a couple hundred GB of data that way is not something I'd ever try again. Mechanical HDDs, with the moving parts may have a higher risk of breaking down in certain situations but you can get a large external HDD for a rather low price, SSDs are more expensive per GB , especially the higher you go but at least if it gets dropped or something it's not not likely to damage anything even when running.

I just bought a new internal 4TB drive as a backup/media drive/space freer for my SSDs and to replace my current 2 1TB HDDs, especially my original, annoying 1TB Samsung HDD that was my primary drive back in 2011 until I replaced it with a Seagate hybrid HDD a year or two later. Plan on pulling both out eventually.
 
DBT85

DBT85

Resident Thread Mechanic
Member
Oct 26, 2017
16,245
HDD for large storage ssd for everything else.

So games, windows, other applications etc all from a stupid fast nvme m2 drive.

No need for the access speeds ssds offer just for video storage and playback.

I buy external hdds and shuck them. The price difference between them and internals is insane. Just bought 2x 8tb WD drives for £225, but actually only £195 after their very kind offer of £30 credit for applying for a CC I'll never use.
 
Akira86

Akira86

Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,585
OP, when you say optical HDD, you mean CD or disc media right?
or are you talking magnetic hard disk drives?

because you can make a backup solution of both, but there are risks for both
you can make a raid array of some hard drives, (solid state(ssd) or magnetic) but those drives will eventually fail. you can keep replacing the drives as they fail and maintain you data forever, with some effort.
you can back up with optical drives to some quality disc media but these media are factory manufactured discs, the literal foil will fall off of them over time. Some discs can last for 10 years and longer, but there's no way to really predict failure, so you'd have to make a bunch of backups and take your chances while periodically updating your media.
 
OP
OP
Isamu

Isamu

Member
Dec 18, 2017
1,577
Downtown Rave City
Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah I don't know why I used the term optical. I should have just said "Magnetic old school Hard Disk Drive" or soemthing. If there's a mod lurking can you change the subject title and poll to "Hard Disk Drive"?
 
Yogi

Yogi

Banned
Nov 10, 2019
1,806
From what I've read, sometimes the catch with online cloud storage for backups is the cost of downloading the data should your drive fail! Which is ridiculous imo.
 
Rizific

Rizific

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,948
The 1Tb hdd (WD black) I used in my first pc build in 2009 just died a few months ago. That drive was mainly used for games. Havent had a ssd die yet, though my oldest one is from probably 2011 and is still being used as the boot/os drive in my son's pc.
 
vash2695

vash2695

Member
Nov 4, 2017
29
Indianapolis
SSDs, as long as they are from a decent quality brand, have a substantially lower rate of failure. I worked on a service desk at a company that deployed hundreds of SSDs to laptops and the majority of issues we saw were from bitlocker or a bad firmware release (Intel), which was fixable. I also snagged dozens of SSDs that were no longer in use, already with hundreds or thousands of hours logged, and have not experienced a single failure.

Before working on the service desk I was also a repair technician and saw exactly one SSD failure across 8 years of work.

All of that being said, definitely back up your data, regardless of the media you store your primary it on.
 
Netherscourge

Netherscourge

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,899
Back up your stuff on a separate drive and use whatever you want for your primary drive.

Never rely on a single drive for storage.
 
CreepingFear

CreepingFear

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
16,766
SSD's are more reliable. The paranoia about the SSD's cell wearing out is silly, unless you are constantly writing to it like a server 24/7. For that, they do make Enterprise SSD's. By the time that SSD wears out, you will have probably replaced it and moved your data to a bigger and faster SSD.
 

ChrisJSY

Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,053
If money was not a factor or concern? Obviously the better performing, SSD and while they don't come as large; apparently money is no concern.
I'd buy a rack and slam in some nvme arrays, boom.

I have a feeling you're thinking that moving your collection to one place is backing up, which it is not, please tell me you have it copied to TWO locations?
I ask because I have hundreds of personal examples of people coming to me saying they backed up their stuff, the device broke and I ask where the other copy is and they look at me with the face of non understanding.

I also ask because you ask about retrieving data, which is a non-concern if again you have two copies, so you wouldn't be asking.
 
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