2.5" hdd reliability - same as 3.5"?

[eddiew]

Hey folks,

I have a couple of aging HDDs that I'd like to replace and consolidate into one larger (4+ tb) drive. It is purely for streaming media to my TV, and holding backup files; I've got plenty of SSD space for games and work files, so this drive does not need to be fast, but I do want a good long working life out of it and it should be as quiet and cool as possible.

I've got a bit of a mind to get a little 2.5" 5tb drive to free up some physical space and a bit of power usage, but... well, in my experience, laptops fail much faster than desktops, and I'm wondering if there's anything intrinsically unreliable about the 2.5" drive format? I notice the only option is Seagate, with a mere 2 year warranty, which almost feels like they are expecting them to die young...

If it's a bad idea I'll probably go with a WD Red Pro.

Of note; I will also get some sort of external drive to occasionally take manual backups of the most important stuff. It does worry me that I have 20 years of digitised CDs on a single drive. Would not like to have to do that all over again!

Thanks for any advice!

 

[eddiew]

My experience, albeit with usb drives, is that I've had 2.5inch fail but I've not had 3.5inch fail (touch wood). I wasn't slinging it around either but in all honesty it's literally luck of the draw when it comes to hard drives, I have seen a fair few negative reviews on the 5tb 2.5 inch drives though.

If you're concerned over longevity of data, online or bluray/tape as another backup is likely the best but you could double up on the hard drives for a bit of piece of mind..... if it's music, I uploaded mine to google music as a 'backup' and in some cases got better quality than I'd started with when I downloaded it lol

The power usage difference would be pretty minimal in all honesty because the 3.5inch is generally faster meaning it would be 'working' for less time etc.

I think I'm 1 and 1 on the failure front; lost a Seagate laptop drive after just 2 years of service - though it did do me the favour of degrading slowly such that I could get data off it before swapping it for an SSD. Also lost a Seagate desktop drive, but that was about 10 years ago and maybe that's no longer indicative. You might be right with the power; most of the time both my HDDs are spun down because I'm working off one of my three SSDs instead.

I think my current 4tb WD Green might be on its way, but I'm not really sure yet. Yesterday it didn't start with the PC, but after a jiggle of the cables and a reboot it came back. I should probably try another cable before consigning it to the bin, really, but I suspect it is 5+ years old and can't even find where/when it was bought. I also have a 1tb WD something that is possibly pushing a decade now - it's currently the backup drive, while the Green is the media drive. Maybe I can find a drive health monitor to pass over them...

Either way, I'm inclined to get a 2tb external drive for ~£75 which I can do monthly backups with then put it back in a drawer. It'll hold the bulk of my media (~1.6tb), plus the most recent copy of my working files from Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop. Most of my documents are either in Dropbox or Google docs. There is a part of me wants to fit a 2-4tb sata SSD for "slow data" and remove all spinning disks, but I'm a little bit too Yorkshire to really consider it

Or I could be a sensible human being and uninstall the ones I haven't played for a couple of years.

Side note, I very nearly ordered a £25 "2 terabyte" flash drive from the rainforest... then realised that was too good to be true, and also it looked very slim and graceful for 2tb. Turns out there is a common scam with flash drives that misreport their size to the OS, but just overwrite data as they go. Actual capacity can be as low as 800mb, but they work fine until you fill them. At least I caught on before I wasted my money there, but how disappointing that a major retailer is allowing people to sell products that don't exist!