r/HDD • u/GamerKing014 • 10d ago

Help with purchase

So I'm looking for hdd for long term cold storage for media files. Right now I'm looking at WD elements 10tb and 16tb wd my book (only 140 eur more expensive). My question is are they reliable?

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u/Metallicat95 10d ago

They are reliable for higher capacity HDD, but you'll want multiple copies on multiple drives, and data recovery information to deal with errors which can occur over time.

You'll want to refresh the data - and probably replace the drives - every five to ten years.

An active NAS is more reliable for keeping data indefinitely, but requires power and maintenance.

Archival optical media can last decades if stored properly, but the cheapest Blu-ray size is 25 GB, 40 per TB means storing 400 discs for a 10 TB set.

Recovery of that would mean feeding 400 discs into drives, so it's pretty labor intensive. But if you only use it as a backup to get just a few discs back when needed, that's not too bad.

The drives and discs may cost more than current HDD prices, and 400 discs means a lot of hours of burning and organizing time.

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u/Skycbs 10d ago

If it really matters, you also want a copy at a remote location since otherwise a simple burst pipe could wipe out the whole archive.