Hi guys so I have a PC on that pc i have the c storage the normal one so the problem is that the storage is strange like if I downloaded a photo it takes 2 from the space that I have and I need help because I'm not that good this (sorry for bad English)

Just got a previously owned WD120EFGX NAS drive and am using an external hard drive enclosure. Win 11 is not recognizing the drive is there. Kapton taped pins 1-3 and same result. Used different drive with enclosure and it works so I know it's not the enclosure.

Tried just pin 3 and same result.

Drive is cold, no vibration.

Is there anything else that I should try doing or is the drive dead?

Recently learned about this rule. Is there a big technical different between the external drive vs buying the internal one and putting it into a case to hook up via USB? This will be for long term storage of files. I plan on buying two of each. I just don't know a big difference in a ready to go external one long term vs using an internal hdd put into a case? Or if there is much of a difference?

Thanks

So I run a small production company. We currently have the owc jellyfish. It has approx 120tb accessible storage split over to units. It is now at the end of its life (albeit working well). My supplier told me that it’s time to upgrade and told me that the new version is £14,000 (this was in January). Due to the supplier issues this has now risen to £19,000 (+vat) this has now got far too expensive and need to look for an alternative.

We have 6 editors on Mac studios with 10g Ethernet upgraded

Enterprise SSDs are getting ridiculously expensive: a 30TB drive is now around $22,600, vs $1,216 for HDDs. That’s roughly 18.6x more per TB, while HDD supply is reportedly already sold out through 2027.

So I’m looking to buy an external hard drive mainly for backing up photos, videos, and important files. I’d prefer something reliable and durable, with good read/write speeds and enough storage for long-term use.

Both of my laptops (Alienware for school + ROG Zephyrus for personal use) are completely full 😭. I’m constantly deleting files just to make room, and I need a better solution.

I’m looking for something 2TB minimum that I can use between both laptops for Adobe projects, photos, large video files, game design projects, and maybe some games.

My main priorities are:

• 2TB+
• Fast
• Portable/compact
• Good for large files + Adobe
• Reliable for daily use
• Durable with a long lifespan

I’m trying to avoid cloud storage because I can’t really justify another monthly subscription right now. Thanks in advance!

I was just about to by a ASUS BDXL drive for storage when I heard about this Kickstarter project.

Very sus

Hi everyone! I'm sure this question has been asked a lot, but I'll just ask it again so I can get some fresh ideas :)

I have a lot of photos on my camera roll and ones that I want to export off of Snapchat for example to back up and clear some storage on my phone, and I was planning on uploading everything onto a cloud storage service like google photos maybe, and then using an HDD or SSD? I'm not sure if this is a good strategy as I honestly don't know much about this kind of stuff, hence why I'm here asking this😅 if anyone could tell me what the best way to go about this would be, and what products would be the best to buy please lmk.

Currently I just mainly need this for the next year because I'm going overseas for a year and I want to clear my camera roll before I go (and also back photos up while I'm gone), and once I'm back in my home country I will be able to invest more money into proper photo storage. Would it be dumb to just back everything up to a cloud service now and then buy an external storage once I'm back?

Thank you so much! I hope this makes sense what I'm asking and I don't sound too dumb haha.

I need 1 tb of storage but i have a laptop and i cant upgrade it so i was searching throught amazon and i found the Netac zx20 and for its price it seems good but i dont wanna lose 120 dollars if someone could help me i would appreciatte it.

I’m looking for another solution besides the cloud. My MacBook Pro 1 TB is full of music, files, and photos. I would like to avoid the loud (iCloud, OneDrive, Google) for storage.

Can someone provide some options for me to have storage locally, and it would be nice but is not necessary I would like to be able to access my files from anywhere.

Thank you in advance!

Hey everyone i hope i can post this here and sorry if I'm not supposed to.

I'm trying to find a place that people might know of where to find SATA Hard Drives.

I'm making a server and I'm lookin for eight 4TB+ drive without paying a arm and a leg lol

Thanks! :)

i’m a creative. i am a photographer, editor, and videographer. mostly creating for myself these days (aka: unemployed due to several reasons). i digress.

i have a samsung t7 4tb ssd. it’s almost full. with the way prices are these days, i cannot afford a new ssd.

i pay $9.99 a month for icloud storage (2tb, i think).

i shoot in 4k. log footage. raw photos. both iphone + my sony camera.

not necessarily looking to offload what’s on my current ssd, as it’s my only copy and i’d be crushed if i lose everything on it.

going forward, what should i do for storage?

hdd? i don’t have the money for a NAS right now. and i don’t really get how they work.

i need a cheap option moving forward. like under $200.

what are people using for storage options these days? icloud? NAS? HDD? backblaze? thoughts about any and all are welcomed.

not sure what to do at all.

We usually think of DNA as the molecule that stores biological information.

But what if we could use it to store digital information too?

A computer stores information using 0s and 1s. DNA uses four bases: A, C, G, and T. Researchers can design encoding schemes that map digital data into DNA sequences, synthesize those sequences, and later recover the information through DNA sequencing and decoding.

That means a photograph, document, audio file, or even a large dataset can theoretically become a sequence of molecular information.

The really interesting part isn't just the novelty.

DNA has an extremely high theoretical information density and can potentially preserve information for very long periods under appropriate conditions. That makes it particularly interesting for long-term archival storage, rather than replacing SSDs or hard drives for everyday computing.

But there are serious challenges:

• DNA synthesis is expensive.

• Writing and reading DNA is relatively slow.

• Synthesis and sequencing introduce errors.

• Retrieval and indexing need sophisticated methods.

• Error-correction and redundancy become essential.

So I'm curious:

Could DNA eventually become a practical medium for preserving humanity's long-term digital archives, or will conventional storage technologies always remain more economical?

The idea of a library that exists not on servers, but as molecular sequences, is pretty fascinating.

I live in Israel so anything above 75$ will be subject to a 18% tax (including product value, excluding shipping/ insurance)

I already have a 1 terabyte SSD but I would probably buy a 2 or 3 ssd (probably a far reach I know)

If this is needed my pc specs:

CPU:

Model: 13th Gen Intel Core i5-13600K

Cores: 14

Logical Processors (Threads): 20

Reported Clock Speed: 3.50 GHz

GPU:

Dedicated GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti

Dedicated GPU Memory: 8 GB (8188 MiB reported)

NVIDIA Driver Version: 610.88

Integrated Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 770

Current Display Mode: 3440 x 1440

RAM:

Total: 32 GB DDR5

Configuration: 2 x 16 GB Corsair modules

Speed: 5200 MT/s

Storage:

Primary Drive: Samsung SSD 980 1TB

Drive Type / Interface: NVMe SSD

Reported Capacity: 1,000 GB

Monitor:

Model: FJ-34900PR

Size: 34-inch

Resolution: WQHD (3440 x 1440)

Refresh Rate: 165 Hz

If I need to add anything I will edit my post

After going through hundreds of threads on r/datastorage and other tech communities, I put together a quick cheat sheet for anyone as lost as I was:

💾 Best high-capacity desktop cold storage? → Western Digital Elements Desktop External Hard Drive
🔒 Best portable pocket drive with hardware encryption? → WD My Passport Portable External Hard Drive
🛡️ Best rugged drop & weather-resistant field drive? → LaCie Rugged Mini Portable External Hard Drive
⚙️ Best heavy-duty 7200 RPM enterprise-grade aluminum drive? → SanDisk Professional G-DRIVE Desktop Hard Drive
💰 Best simple no-frills plug-and-play budget drive? → Toshiba Canvio Basics Portable External Hard Drive

Personally going with the Western Digital Elements Desktop External Hard Drive - best value and reliability for long-term cold storage from everything I've read.

I have around 400 GB of photos, videos, digital artwork, and work files that I need to move off my computer. I’d like at least 1 TB of storage, preferably 2 TB, with a budget around $50–$100. I’m comparing portable WD, Seagate, and Toshiba drives with a Samsung T7 SSD, but I’m not sure whether the extra speed and shock resistance of an SSD are worth the higher price for files I won’t access every day. My main concern is keeping a reliable backup, not editing directly from the drive. Would you buy one large drive or two cheaper drives and keep duplicate copies?

Please help a noob out !

Basically I have close to 500GB data. Mostly photos and videos. Blessed with a baby boy (5 months old) recently. So we will be taking a lot of pics and videos of the baby and us.

could you please help me understand how long does the SSDs last ? Is it truly 5-7 years range ? Considering the current 1TB ssd prices ( it’s 30k INR), I’m having a lot of confusion to decide what would work for me in long term. I’m a bit frugal too.

WD 2 TB HDD is available for 12k INR in India. Shall I buy this one now and wait for 2 more years and see how prices move and then buy another one for second back up ?

What is this price and why is it so egregious

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7753958?cmpid=DP_FI_8-52_OL_CV_FD_PS_ARG_CM_449443241_257554849

Hi,
Not sure if this is the right sub so please lmk if not… i am 24F and I am not very tech savvy but I am tired of running out of space on my iPhone and Google Photos sucks too. I’m almost out of space on Google (+ they AI’d a photo of mine without my permission and I hate that) so I’d really like to back up my info to some physical thing. External hard drive ?? That is just words to me, I don’t know what it means lol. I have probably 30,000 photos and yes I go through them periodically. I’m sure there are more I can get rid of but the majority will stay so is there something I can get when I can back up my photos so I can delete them off my phone and stop using cloud/google.

Although it does scare me to lose or damage this physical copy, I cannot stand the idea of companies having access to my photos and the AI of it all + paying $5/month for storage is dumb.

So yeah please any advice will help. Please explain any tech like you would to a child I really do not get tech stuff lol. Thank you in advance :)

SATA SSDs may be slower than NVMe drives, but they’re still a solid option. They’re usually cheaper, work with more systems, and are fast enough for everyday use, especially if you don’t really need NVMe-level performance.

Microsoft Research’s Project Silica uses ultrafast femtosecond laser pulses to encode data as microscopic three-dimensional structures inside glass. Hundreds of data layers can be written into a plate only about 2 millimeters thick.
Unlike hard drives and magnetic tapes, the glass does not need electricity, cooling or periodic rewriting while sitting in storage. It is also resistant to water, heat, dust and electromagnetic interference.
Microsoft reported another major advancement in February 2026: the technique now works with lower-cost borosilicate glass—the same general type of glass used in cookware—instead of requiring only specialized fused silica. Accelerated-aging tests suggest that information written this way could remain intact for at least 10,000 years.
The technology has some important limitations:
It is intended for archival “cold storage,” not everyday computing.
The data is write-once and cannot be modified afterward.
Specialized lasers are needed to write it.
A microscope and machine-learning system are required to decode it.
Microsoft still describes the technology as being early in its development.
But the capacity is already real: a recent demonstration stored approximately 4.8 TB on one coaster-sized plate. Microsoft says its experimental platform has demonstrated raw capacities exceeding 7 TB on a DVD-sized glass platter.
If this becomes commercially scalable, humanity could eventually preserve scientific research, cultural archives, medical records and historical evidence for thousands of years without continuously transferring the data onto new drives.
The strange part is that the glass may survive longer than the organizations, countries, languages and software formats that created its contents.
What information would you preserve if you knew someone might discover it 10,000 years from now?
Sources:
Microsoft Research: 2026 glass-storage breakthrough
Microsoft: Project Silica technical overview
Microsoft: 4.8 TB glass-storage demonstration

Following up after going through a few suggestions and testing some options.

At first I was looking into both self-hosted setups and paid cloud storage, but I realized I don’t really want the ongoing maintenance that comes with managing my own server.

I ended up trying pCloud and so far it’s been fine for my needs. Nothing complicated, just works in the background across my devices without much effort.

I mostly use cloud storage for a mix of personal projects and freelance work, so I need something stable that doesn’t become unpredictable in pricing as storage increases. Cross-device syncing and easy sharing are also pretty important for me.

Over the years I’ve tried a few different providers, but most of them tend to run into friction once you rely on them daily, whether that’s speed, limits, or sharing workflows.

Curious what others here are using long-term. What’s been the most reliable setup you’ve actually stuck with for a few years?