The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/ZiggyJambu on 2024-08-23 15:43:00.
I bought 2 external HD in 2020 from Costco that both started acting up a few weeks back. I was unable to correct the reading error and after a prolonged process with Seagate they have replaced the hard drives for me. I think I may have received a refurbished one, but what can I do?
Having said that, I had transferred all of my music onto the 2 TB drive (including all of my CD collection and digital downloads) and all of my photographs since 2004 onto my 5 TB drive. I am an amateur photographer and for example took over 15,000 pictures on my last two vacations overseas. My PC could not handle all of this and now that I am retired, I do most of my computer work on my laptop.
It would seem that even if I do not touch these, there will be a problem just because they age. If this is the main reason for failure, rather than amount of use then if I buy additional hard drives now and do not touch these (Back up for my back up) then that seems like a waste of time and money as I should expect these to fail over time as well.
So, what do you do? Do you just automatically buy new hard drives every 2-3 years? Do you just hope that things hold up? I really want to preserve many of the pictures if not all. I have separate smaller files of my favorites but even that becomes an issue for where they are stored.
Thanks for help.
Finally, I have found over time that even when I pay more for QUALITY brands, it still becomes a 50/50 bet that things will go fine. I learned for example that refrigerators fail 70-80% in the first year regardless of brand. It is cheaper and easier for the companies to repair those that breakdown than to fix it at the production level.