I know this will be very much down to debate but I'm a great fan of USBs and external hard drives these days, their designs have come a very long way. I remember how horribly flimsy a lot of components and their connectors were back in the day with those gold teeth and they feel so solid now.
All nand flash based devices will die. Doesn't matter how gently you care for them, the electrons will slowly diffuse out of their little buckets and they will cease to function. As for when, according to the internet it's somewhere between 1 week and 40 years. I'm predicting the mask rom systems will outlast all of the nand flash systems - including disc based systems that use flash for their bios. Although when it starts happening, there will be a big market for bios replacements to rebuild the systems - but DS, 3DS and Switch games are going to turn into pumpkins.
I like them for what they are good at, but hard drives are terrible for archive storage purposes. If you look at old school PCs, old hard drives almost never work. New ones are improved, sure, but there's still enough of the same design that will struggle to survive 30 years of storage. I wouldn't save anything on a hard drive as the only way to have it 10 years from now.
This is why transferring stuff and making regular backups is so necessary, all components deteriorate eventually. Had a moment with a relatively new m.2. SSD just recently and it reminded me to back up the leftover files I have on there so nothing important was left. I'm pretty sure it was just an amp draw issue though and I caused it to hiccup. I always work under the assumption something is going to happen and I'm very grateful when I do.
I went with a QNAP TS1079 Pro. I had a couple of their six bay units before that (639 and 659 I think, it's been a while). They have all been great. It has been several years since I looked into it, so I'm not exactly up to date on the state of the art. I do remember that there were several different manufacturers offering similar products, so you have plenty of options.
I know this will be very much down to debate but I'm a great fan of USBs and external hard drives these days, their designs have come a very long way. I remember how horribly flimsy a lot of components and their connectors were back in the day with those gold teeth and they feel so solid now.
All nand flash based devices will die. Doesn't matter how gently you care for them, the electrons will slowly diffuse out of their little buckets and they will cease to function. As for when, according to the internet it's somewhere between 1 week and 40 years. I'm predicting the mask rom systems will outlast all of the nand flash systems - including disc based systems that use flash for their bios. Although when it starts happening, there will be a big market for bios replacements to rebuild the systems - but DS, 3DS and Switch games are going to turn into pumpkins.
I like them for what they are good at, but hard drives are terrible for archive storage purposes. If you look at old school PCs, old hard drives almost never work. New ones are improved, sure, but there's still enough of the same design that will struggle to survive 30 years of storage. I wouldn't save anything on a hard drive as the only way to have it 10 years from now.
This is why transferring stuff and making regular backups is so necessary, all components deteriorate eventually. Had a moment with a relatively new m.2. SSD just recently and it reminded me to back up the leftover files I have on there so nothing important was left. I'm pretty sure it was just an amp draw issue though and I caused it to hiccup. I always work under the assumption something is going to happen and I'm very grateful when I do.
That's what RAID5 is for. My NAS has been going strong for well over 10 years.
Got any product recommendations for a consumer grade NAS for someone who isn't really looking to stand up a full fledged server rack?
I went with a QNAP TS1079 Pro. I had a couple of their six bay units before that (639 and 659 I think, it's been a while). They have all been great. It has been several years since I looked into it, so I'm not exactly up to date on the state of the art. I do remember that there were several different manufacturers offering similar products, so you have plenty of options.