I own several external 2.5’’ HDDs on the 1 TB range where I save my data. Samsung has worked well for me, but now I need more space.
One option would be to buy an external SSD instead of HDD.
Another would be to get an external NVME, but so far I haven’t found cases for them.
Nowadays we even have 1 TB flash drives, should I get one of these instead?
I could also buy 2 0.5 TB micro SD cards instead.
So many options make it difficult to decide.
What brands and technologies do you recommend?
Software is going to be debian based.
You should look at power settings. HDDs can power down when not being read from or written to. It extends the time you wait when you need the data on them but can save on their lifetime / electric / heat.
I wouldn’t be so sure about the lifetime - spinning up and spinning down put far more stress on the drive components than simply spinning at a constant rate.
Depends on how frequently you’re accessing the data. If it’s infrequently used, then spin up/down can be beneficial. But yes, you raise a good point. Thank you. :)