SSD or HDD For Archiving Music: Advice Please.

[mawnansmiff]

In an attempt to reduce my ever growing mountain of CDs I've taken to ripping them to FLAC files then burning them onto USB sticks to plug into my AVR. I chose to use 32gb sticks so as to keep track of which group was on which stick, such as all Floyd, Tull & Zeppelin on one stick, Dire Straits, Rolling Stones, Hawkwind on another etc.

My plan was to do that and keep a copy of everything on the hard drive of my laptop for back up but of course I didn't take into account the massive amount of space needed to do that. I'm talking roughly 350-400 discs.

So looking at alternatives it seems I need to either go the SSD route or the HDD route. Annoyingly I can't seem to find out for sure which would be the better option. I keep reading horror stories of folk coming back to their storage devices only to find it's either corrupted or just not there at all, and that's from both methods.

Ideally I'd like a solution that left me comfortable to actually get rid of all the discs but I doubt that's possible.

So guys, which route would you go?

Please, no suggestions I store in a cloud, that's akin to asking a stranger to look after your bag of gold coins

Jay.

 

[Snook]

SSD. They're not nearly as expensive as they once were, and have no moving parts so they're a safer bet. I haven't heard of any issues of corruption and have been using one as a backup for all files on my computer for years no with no issues. If you're concerned about possible corruption, you could always back up to two separate drives. But in my opinion, that would be overkill. Having the files locally on your computer and then on the separate SSD would be fine.

 

[olkofri]

HDD all the way.

 

[greeneyes]

I dropped an HDD and lost two decades of photographs. They're inherently unstable from an architectural standpoint.

For your application (writing to storage : reading from storage) an SDD is fine.

 

[ziv]

Magnetic tape all the way!

Magnetic Tape Data Storage - Importance and Usage

Magnetic tape storage is an old technology still used nowadays. Learn about industries where tapes are used and for which purposes.

www.pitsdatarecovery.com

 

[mawnansmiff]

They're not nearly as expensive as they once were, and have no moving parts so they're a safer bet.

Well I can get a SanDisk 1TB for £75 which sounds reasonable to me but on Amazon it has plenty of negative reviews though far more positive reviews.

BTW, isn't an SSD the same as a USB stick?

Jay.

 

[greeneyes]

Magnetic tape all the way!

Magnetic Tape Data Storage - Importance and Usage

Magnetic tape storage is an old technology still used nowadays. Learn about industries where tapes are used and for which purposes.

www.pitsdatarecovery.com

Perhaps for long term storage of music he doesn't plan on listening to. If he intends to access the music at will and listen on command, magnetic tape systems aren't very convenient.

"Magnetic tapes are a cost-effective solution for storing large files that may not be accessed frequently but must be preserved for future use." (Link above)

 

[Snook]

Well I can get a SanDisk 1TB for £75 which sounds reasonable to me but on Amazon it has plenty of negative reviews though far more positive reviews.

BTW, isn't an SSD the same as a USB stick?

Jay.

Yeah, I believe they're the same.

I would take reviews with a grain of salt. For every person that gets on Amazon to write an angry review when something fails, there's probably 499 others that haven't had any issues.

 

[Dave760]

Yeah, I believe they're the same.

I would take reviews with a grain of salt. For every person that gets on Amazon to write an angry review when something fails, there's probably 499 others that haven't had any issues.

At least some SanDisk SSD products have had failure issues. Here's an early article on this:

SanDisk Extreme SSDs keep abruptly failing—firmware fix for only some promised

Ars saw two 2TB units become unreadable, but SanDisk only confirms 4TB troubles.

arstechnica.com

 

[Dave760]

In an attempt to reduce my ever growing mountain of CDs I've taken to ripping them to FLAC files then burning them onto USB sticks to plug into my AVR. I chose to use 32gb sticks so as to keep track of which group was on which stick, such as all Floyd, Tull & Zeppelin on one stick, Dire Straits, Rolling Stones, Hawkwind on another etc.

My plan was to do that and keep a copy of everything on the hard drive of my laptop for back up but of course I didn't take into account the massive amount of space needed to do that. I'm talking roughly 350-400 discs.

So looking at alternatives it seems I need to either go the SSD route or the HDD route. Annoyingly I can't seem to find out for sure which would be the better option. I keep reading horror stories of folk coming back to their storage devices only to find it's either corrupted or just not there at all, and that's from both methods.

Ideally I'd like a solution that left me comfortable to actually get rid of all the discs but I doubt that's possible.

So guys, which route would you go?

Please, no suggestions I store in a cloud, that's akin to asking a stranger to look after your bag of gold coins

Jay.

The reality is that no one-level backup of digital data is completely safe. Even HHDs and SSDs sitting on a shelf can fail. A true, safe backup solution requires a multi-layer approach and also requires maintenance over time. If you have three copies of data and two of the disagree with the third, you can guess that the mismatched copy is corrupt. If you only have two copies then you're just guessing. If you only have one, you won't know if there are any problems with the data.

You have to decide just how important your data is to you and what you're willing to do to protect it.

If I was in your position, I'd get an SSD and fill it with my music but keep the CDs. (And, yes, even CDs can fail over time. Data is transient...)

 

[sablebrush52]

So guys, which route would you go?

I'm partial to wax cylinders, myself.

 

[Snook]

I'm partial to wax cylinders, myself.

Is it even storing data if it's not on a wax cylinder?

 

[Elric]

Well I can get a SanDisk 1TB for £75 which sounds reasonable to me but on Amazon it has plenty of negative reviews though far more positive reviews.

BTW, isn't an SSD the same as a USB stick?

Jay.

I avoid the SanDisk Extremes for the reasons others have mentioned. I have one but it's a fire vault as a tertiary copy that no longer receives any writes.

I don't believe USB sticks are rated for anywhere near the number of read/write/erase cycles an SSD is. This is particularly true of you look at non-consumer grade SSDs like we used to use in our data center, We experienced very few failures for around 2.6PB of total storage. NVMe storage is also pretty robust with Samsung achieving something like 4000TB of write durability for a 1 or 2TB unit.

 

[BingBong]

The trouble is that CD covers often contain a wealth of info unavailable elsewhere. I refer you to the Heavy Circles album, a collaboration between Edie Brickell and her stepson Harper Simon. All references to Harper have been erased from the relevant Wiki page (was he caught knobbing his step-mum or something?); when I edited the page, the edits were reverted within three minutes or so. The original CD cover does not suffer from this Mandela effect.

 

[Sigmund]

the earlier post nails it. One copy isn’t adequate. You need at least one in system copy and one removable copy. If your pc suffers theft, electrical damage etc… you will have another copy free from that system. For photos I have six backups. 2 hard drives, two ssds, 1 removable hard drive and one cloud backup. That is excessive but they are original works, not a cd.

 

[Elric]

the earlier post nails it. One copy isn’t adequate. You need at least one in system copy and one removable copy. If your pc suffers theft, electrical damage etc… you will have another copy free from that system. For photos I have six backups. 2 hard drives, two ssds, 1 removable hard drive and one cloud backup. That is excessive but they are original works, not a cd.

This ^^^^

Don't forget about offsite backups if you don't keep one in the cloud.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

I’m not understanding the point - is your receiver set up to play from the storage sources? Sounds like a lot of time dedicated to what end? And if it’s more of having a project and that’s the point, enjoy.

 

[renfield]

Which is better depends on the size of your collection. If you can fit it on SSD at a cost you can tolerate, then SSD is the way to go. If not, put it on a spinning iron HDD until SSD prices fall and transfer over.

As always, back up your collection, it’s a pain to have to re-rip everything.
One is none and two is one. i.e. two copies is really only one backup. One copy isn’t really a backup. Storing the backups in different physical locations is important as well.

I keep the physical (original) copy of my music but find I very rarely look at it.

 

[mawnansmiff]

Well guys, thanks all of you for the input.

Having looked at what is available on Amazon, and reading some of the more honest looking reviews I feel that the best way for me to go would be by buying say four 256gb pendrives from a known brand and spreading my album folders in to those.

That way if one drive failed then the loss wouldn't be so great if everything was on the one drive.

Now, whether to pick SanDisk, Crucial, Kingston......or Amazon Basics

Jay.

 

[renfield]

Check into recent reports of counterfeit drives while doing your research.

I know there are some SanDisks out there that have legit looking packaging but the drives are reject chips that fail very early on or aren’t even the advertised size. Sadly these fakes have made it into the supply chain of even the big name sellers.