My phone and camera storage are almost full, and I want an external drive for backing up my photos and videos. I already pay for cloud photo storage, but I'd also like a local copy in case something goes wrong. The drive would only be used occasionally for backups and would spend most of its time stored in a drawer or on a shelf. SSDs are faster and have no moving parts, but they cost considerably more than HDDs. Since transfer speed isn't a major concern, which type would make the most sense for this use case?
4 Answers
For occasional backups, an HDD is probably the better value. You’ll get much more storage for the money, and the slower transfer speed shouldn’t matter if you’re copying files only now and then. SSDs are more convenient if you travel with the drive or need fast access, but they’re not necessary for a drive that mostly sits in storage. It’s also a good idea to connect an SSD periodically rather than leaving it unused for years.
The most important thing is having more than one backup. If the photos are valuable, buy two reasonably priced HDDs and keep separate copies. A single SSD or HDD can fail, be lost, or be damaged, so using two drives is more useful than spending the entire budget on one premium drive.
If an SSD and HDD have the same capacity and nearly the same price, the SSD is a nice upgrade because it’s quieter, faster, and less vulnerable to bumps while it’s running. Otherwise, choose the cheaper HDD and put the savings toward a second backup drive. For this particular use, capacity and redundancy matter more than speed.
An HDD should work fine here, especially since you don’t need to edit large video files directly from it. Consider the 3-2-1 approach: keep at least three copies of important data, on two different types of storage, with one copy somewhere separate or in the cloud. Your cloud library plus two local drives would give you much better protection than choosing SSD versus HDD alone.
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