Flash memory vs ssd vs HDD in best lasting

[ThinkPad560X]

I am talking about this as I am getting worried about using SSDs. I moved to SSDs when they became affordable "Got a 1TB WD SSD for $120" I have around 5 1TB WD SSDS and 1 500GB WD SSD in a laptop. Recently my main drive in desktop has been acting slow during bootup and even seconds of freezing here and there. Sometimes it will cause the machine not to boot the drive with a post prompt flashing. It is running a fully updated Windows 7 Pro 64bit. It has a lot of activated software on the drive that the servers are probably not active anymore to try for a new install and activate the software again. I can pickup a new 2TB WD HDD for $49 with the exception I lose fast boot time and speed. That is for a WD blue, I think a 10TB WD Black HDD is $149. I never had problems with WD so that is why I always bought Western Digital.

A few Months ago, I bought a 500GB SSD and the PC wouldn't write to the drive to install windows. Windows installation would detect the drive but failed to write. Then I have another 1TB SSD for backup and a few times it would not detect and had to restart and even unplugged the drive to reconnected it for it to read. I am thinking of going back to HDDs. I know they are slower but they can last decades and you'll know when the drive is about to die. I still have HDDs from early to mid 90s that still run and then the 2000s 20GB-320GB HDDs. I also have a Nintendo Wii U and I got it out of storage to download games before the eshop closes on it and been seeing videos now that the flash memory "SSD" would brick the machines if haven't been powered for years. Mine hasn't been powered for around 8 years and I plugged it in and let it charge the tablet before fully powering it on as I like to let the machine get power running through before fully turning on.

[TPFanatic]

There's a lot of crap SSDs out there. My only SSD that has personally failed on me was a Visiontek 480GB that blew off a capacitor. WD Blue SSDs are fine as far as I know, but I believe WD Green doesn't have NAND.

I like to run dual-drive setups with a small SSD for the OS and programs and a high capacity drive for storage, historically I've used cheap HDDs in the 500GB or 1TB size. Thanks to Moore's Law secondhand 1TB 2.5" SSDs are now $40 on the used market so I probably won't be buying HDDs ever again. Partly I'm afraid of getting a drive with SMR.

I understand Flash storage is the worst for reliability and longevity. I hate SD cards and flash drives. I recently bought a pack of old colorful Verbatim flash drives and every one I tried to use was already dead.

[axur-delmeria]

There's a lot of crap SSDs out there. My only SSD that has personally failed on me was a Visiontek 480GB that blew off a capacitor. WD Blue SSDs are fine as far as I know, but I believe WD Green doesn't have NAND.

Perhaps you mean DRAM (referring to the WD Green)? That's expected of entry-level SSDs.

We had two Kingston mS200 60GB mSATA SSDs that failed around the 5-year mark. These were the first SSDs we had, so that's understandable.

Newer SSDs seem to have quality issues, with numerous reports of WD Blue SA510 drives failing within a year, and certain batches of Samsung 870 EVOs https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/thre ... re.291504/. Also, the SA510's seem to be considerably slower, leading some to suspect that it's DRAM-less at best, or rebadged WD Greens at worst.

I like to run dual-drive setups with a small SSD for the OS and programs and a high capacity drive for storage, historically I've used cheap HDDs in the 500GB or 1TB size. Thanks to Moore's Law secondhand 1TB 2.5" SSDs are now $40 on the used market so I probably won't be buying HDDs ever again. Partly I'm afraid of getting a drive with SMR.

My X220 used to have such a dual-drive setup. The mSATA SSD died first, so I decided to replace it and the 1TB HDD with a 1TB Crucial MX500. The 1TB HDD had a head crash while in a USB enclosure.
This led me to purchase a 4TB WD Red Plus HDD (I made sure it's not SMR) in order to have enough space to recover data from the 1TB.

Regarding flash drive longevity, I still have two old Kingston flash disks (one 256MB, the other 512MB) that are still working.

[ThinkPad560X]

I'm going to pickup a 2TB HDD as I don't need the fast boot time or anything. I didn't jump to SSDs when they first came out as to hearing about them not lasting long with time and read/write times + the Price. I though that would be worked out by now. I never used WD Green Just all WD Blue. Never did see a WD Black of SSD but have HDD of Black. I was going to get a M.2 Drive as they were coming down in price. It seems that HDDs and Compact Discs are still the best for long lasting as long if taken care of. This reminds me of the floppy disk days. Would get a lot of corrupt partitions and would lose lots of paragraphs on word docs.

My Main worry is how the quality is of all these devices are made today, as they are just quickly made and shipped out.

(If don't get that WD Blue 2TB, I may get that WD Black 10TB HDD)