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?
External hard drive enclosures get hot even while reading, but especially writing, so using them regularly will actually decrease the life a lot.
Get an external enclosure with a fan that actually blows air and the hdd in it will last forever no matter what you do to it. Good ventilation or an open one is okay, but hdd can get hot even with just convection cooling it.