Hard disk drives go on sale regularly. I replace mine usually once a year or so. They're not expensive relative to the loss of the data. I just bought a 500G SSD drive on sale for $60.
I've read that SSDs are also generally more susceptible to data degradation earlier than spinning rust, although I'm not sure how true that is. Wikipedia[0] says:
- Solid-state media...store data using electrical charges, which can slowly leak away due to imperfect insulation.
- Magnetic media...may experience data decay as bits lose their magnetic orientation. Periodic refreshing by rewriting the data can alleviate this problem. In warm/humid conditions these media, especially those poorly protected against ambient air, are prone to the physical decomposition of the storage medium.
In either case, only ZFS/Btrfs/ReFS seem to implement strategies to deal with data corruption. Kinda sad that Apple recently released a new FS and didn't bother to address this.
Hard disk drives go on sale regularly. I replace mine usually once a year or so. They're not expensive relative to the loss of the data. I just bought a 500G SSD drive on sale for $60.