4 reasons you shouldn’t use an SSD for long-term backups

When storing data for a long time, particularly backups, should you use a solid-state drive (SSD) or hard disk drive (HDD)? Although one should populate their NAS or external enclosure with a supported drive, I recommend against using SSDs for backing up all your data unless you’ll frequently be writing new data to the drive(s). Here are some other reasons why HDDs may be the better option.

4 Finite offline data retention

Did you know that if you power down your PC, take the SSD out, and store it somewhere for a year or two, there’s a chance the data may not be retrievable? That’s because an SSD works by using electricity to charge cells inside memory chips. The SSD continues to hold a small charge, even when powered off. If you don’t connect the SSD to a power source and cycle it often, the drive will begin to discharge.

Depending on the temperature of the room where the SSD is stored, the time before the drive discharges and the data is lost. Writing a new backup to the drive will reset everything, but you’ll encounter issues should you need to read the data from the SSD. A HDD, so long as it’s securely stored in a safe location, will last much longer.

3 Higher price per GB

Solid-state drives have fallen in price over the years but are still considerably more pricey than hard drives. A 1TB SSD will set you back $40 for a 2.5-inch SATA drive, but an M.2 NVMe SSD with the same capacity can cost as much as $100 for faster transfer rates. A hard drive will set you back $100 for a whopping 10TB, beating the SSD on price and storage space, though it won’t come anywhere near NVMe drives for performance.

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2 Limited capacities

You’ll struggle to locate an SSD larger than 4TB. Even 8TB SSDs are incredibly rare with only a few models available and they cost a small fortune. For backing up data, it’s simply not worth the additional cost, especially when you’re restricted by the number of drive slots. An HDD can have a capacity of more than 20TB, so you won’t need as many and can store much more data on each drive.

1 SSDs can fail without warning

Any drive can fail suddenly, but it’s more likely to happen with an SSD. Although advances have been made to the technology over recent generations and you’re less likely to encounter issues, a hard drive will still fail in a somewhat predictable way. You should have ample warning to move data off or replace the drive before things go wrong. Whereas an SSD could fail any minute now.

Consider how to store your data for the long term

Network-attached storage devices are fantastic for storing data for longer periods. The same goes for backup drives, especially if you don’t plan on changing data on these drives often. If you plan to use the drive frequently, an SSD will work well, but an HDD makes more sense if you wish to leave data on a drive for longer than a year.