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I had to search around and feel like a dork not knowing this. I have my data backed up, but I keep the SSDs because it's nice to have the OS running like it was

I had to search around and feel like a dork not knowing this. I have my data backed up, but I keep the SSDs because it's nice to have the OS running like it was... I guess I need to be cloning the drives to ISOs and storing on spinning rust.

dpoloncsak 10mo ago
I could be wrong, but I believe the general consensus is along the lines of "SSDs for in-use data, it's quicker and wants to be powered on often. HDDs for long-term storage, as they don't degrade when not in use nearly as fast as SSDs do.
- joezydeco 10mo ago
  I've been going through stack of external USB drives with laptop disks in them. They're all failing in some form or another. I'm going to have to migrate it all to a NAS with server-class drives I guess
  - Yokolos 10mo ago
    At the very least, you can usually still get the data off of them. Most SSDs I've encountered with defects failed catastrophically, rendering the data completely inaccessible.
- PunchyHamster 10mo ago
  I'd imagine HDDs also don't like not spinning for years(as mechanical elements generally like to be used from time to time). But at least platters itself are intact
pluralmonad 10mo ago
I learned this when both my old laptops would no longer boot after extended off power time (couple years). They were both stored in a working state and later both had SSDs that were totally dead.
- justin66 10mo ago
  Were the SSDs toasted, or were you able to reinstall to them?
  - pluralmonad 10mo ago
    D.E.A.D. Had to replace them.
gosub100 10mo ago
or you could power them on 1-2x /year.
- ggm 10mo ago
  Power them on and run something to exercise the read function over every bit. Thats why a ZFS filesystem integrity check/scrub is the useful model. I'm unsure if dd if=/the/disk of=/dev/null does the read function.
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    why would it not? it's a low level tool to do exactly that. you could "of" it to somewhere else if you're worried it's not. I like to | hexdump -C, on an xterm set to a green font on a black background for a real matrix movie kind of feel.

dpoloncsak 10mo ago

I could be wrong, but I believe the general consensus is along the lines of "SSDs for in-use data, it's quicker and wants to be powered on often. HDDs for long-term storage, as they don't degrade when not in use nearly as fast as SSDs do.

joezydeco 10mo ago
I've been going through stack of external USB drives with laptop disks in them. They're all failing in some form or another. I'm going to have to migrate it all to a NAS with server-class drives I guess
- Yokolos 10mo ago
  At the very least, you can usually still get the data off of them. Most SSDs I've encountered with defects failed catastrophically, rendering the data completely inaccessible.
PunchyHamster 10mo ago
I'd imagine HDDs also don't like not spinning for years(as mechanical elements generally like to be used from time to time). But at least platters itself are intact

pluralmonad 10mo ago

I learned this when both my old laptops would no longer boot after extended off power time (couple years). They were both stored in a working state and later both had SSDs that were totally dead.

justin66 10mo ago
Were the SSDs toasted, or were you able to reinstall to them?
- pluralmonad 10mo ago
  D.E.A.D. Had to replace them.

gosub100 10mo ago

or you could power them on 1-2x /year.

ggm 10mo ago
Power them on and run something to exercise the read function over every bit. Thats why a ZFS filesystem integrity check/scrub is the useful model. I'm unsure if dd if=/the/disk of=/dev/null does the read function.
- fragmede 10mo ago
  why would it not? it's a low level tool to do exactly that. you could "of" it to somewhere else if you're worried it's not. I like to | hexdump -C, on an xterm set to a green font on a black background for a real matrix movie kind of feel.