I recently had my external HDD that I kept movies on die and when I tried to have the data recovered the tech guy said that regularly accessing files on external HDD's reduced their life span. He obviously tried to upsell me an external media player.
I've never heard of this before, does regularly accessing media on standard external HD's degrade their lifespan? Is it actually better to use an external media player?
I hope you have taken this as a learning opportunity. Portable hard drives tend to fail the most, so nothing you keep on them should be irreplaceable. Back up your data, preferably to two or more separate places. I have my 11TB data store backed up in quadruplicate, i.e. on four unique data stores. NAS, file server, and two workstations. I have 3 paid copies of Stablebit Drivepool, one each on the file server and both work stations.
Now something affordable for the average user. ;)
I built that up over years, I didnt buy it all at once. I aint rich either. :)
All the spinning iron in question is 2 through 6 TB drives, and I started collecting them more than a decade ago at this point.
I meant the NAS and file server. I suppose I should have also said, 'something practical'. ;)