I've not been burned by 16TB HDD (DOA) and 8TB SSD (seems to be crapping out after being filled ~halfway). I'm very frustrated by this.

The SSD is an older Samsung model that uses SATA, since I'm mostly using this as a data archive. Seem SATA options are becoming rare for SSDs.

Whenever I try to copy ~1GB of data to it, it will revert to a ReadOnly mode in the middle of the copy process. This is on linux. I'll probably try some more troubleshooting of it, but I'm not too confident about it being my 'data archive' drive anymore.

From some searching, it seems that the RO mode switch is a sign of the disk going into a protected-failure state. Anyone have any experience with this? Recommendations for data archive drives of this size that are not ridiculously expensive?

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Indeed. It's mostly personal pictures and videos (approaching ~2.5 TB) and that keeps growing. My partner is an avid shutterbug/video maker. I've also got some old collections of downloaded media, but that stuff isn't as critical. Having immediate access to go find old photos on a whim is one of the major requirements for my partner. That's partly why I was leaning towards SSD. The user experience is just so much better.

    Thanks for calling out my pack-ratting though! Now I have a lot more options to consider.

    • CoolYori [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I always tell people that datasets rarely shrink and only do so under nail pulling circumstances. Hell I am totally the pot calling the kettle black.

      Show

      One thing to also add to the mix is what we call hard drive shucking. Its where you buy external western digital drives and strip the drives out. Commonly you can find some dirt cheap storage that way. It only really works for HDDs tho as you dont find many SDD externals with the right form factor. Really cloud storage providers are super cheap these days because how competitive the space is. Let me know if you want any more advice. My day job is in this space and I like to help people anyway I can.

      • culpritus [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for the offer. One question I have is about the long term viability of SAS. It seems like everything is moving towards NVMe/PCIE/U2 for the newer products. I'd hate to invest in a SAS RAID only to have the drive supply options dry up or get extra pricey in a few years time.

        What's the sweet spot for RAID interface at the moment? Is SATA starting to be phased out? It seems like it's mostly just for lower end products these days.

        • CoolYori [she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I would avoid SAS as it has the stigma of being enterprise gear so you will always pay out the ass. The main reason for SAS is so you can run dual controller systems and if you lose a controller/backplane you dont halt and catch fire. There are other advantages to SAS but they really do not affect the home gamer at all.

          I personally dont see SATA going away at all. The standard is too solid and ubiquitous. I would say you are safe with sticking with it on bulk storage in the long term. If anything we would see higher speeds of it come out before they kill it.