Less than two months ago, my 4TB HDD from Transcend died after being used for only 3 years. It'd never been dropped or anything but I used it as a main storage for my stuff, since I learned to never keep anything in the laptop itself except the programs. There was no backup and I tried to restore the data but unfortunately I'm not even able to know what's its problem using CrystalDiskInfo or Windows' CHKDSK command (there's no abnormal sound but it never gets recognized when plugged in). So, I learned the importance of backup, storage device health, encryption and that kind of stuff the hard way.
I was having another HDD, so I used it as a main replacement (it's one year old) and bought two brand-new 5TB HDDs (one from Seagate while the other from WD). I used the WD My Passport as a backup but while it was being encrypted by VeraCrypt and reaching 80%, i got an error message saying it's damaged, 'heart beating' sound appeared on top of the normal spinning sound and I couldn't access it.
Now after being formatted, it turned out it had pending (bad) sectors and in less than 24 hours, the number went from 8 to 75! I bought another new WD 5TB HDD to replace this one (just to secure my data [I'm paranoid now ๐๐] and buying a new one is cheaper than sending the dysfunctional drive to WD, I'm not from the US). This whole experience is daunting and losing time, money and data is not fun.
My question is why are the storage devices this way, and why do devices fail constantly and we have to replace them every other year? I'm not a conspiracy theorist but is the storage devices production industry a scam, to profit and keep us hooked (much like how smartphone companies want you to buy a new phone every years)?
I've no problem buying new storage every 10 years but things fail in less than 3 years? That's insane.
No. The storage industry is not a scam. HDDs are incredibly complex and delicate mechanical devices, that fail, despite manufacturers putting in enormous efforts to make them as reliable as possible.Portable HDDs are even more vulnerable, and you shouldn't consider them long term investments. You should rconsider using portable HDDs as your primary storage, and set up a proper backup strategy.
Is NAS the perfect solution? Or should I use what comes in the computer as the main storage? Thanks,
Depends a lot on your particular use-case. For most people OneDrive is a pretty good place to store personal files like documents.
If it's files you work with daily like for video or media editing, then a local SSD is best. But if it's for streaming music, movies, or even just Microsoft Office type documents, a NAS is much better.
You can set it up with redundancy as well as a way to scan and scrub your disks and data regularly to ensure they are healthy. But also have a regular backup either in the cloud, another NAS, or external drive.
3-2-1 backup rule exists to avoid the situation you're in.