Thinking of External Hard Drives and SD cards for File Backups
Hard Disks, Secondary Storage and Microchips
Moore's Law states that the density of electronic components in microchips would double every year based on the performance of Intel microchips. At least that is how I understand it, or how it was worded originally. Later on, it was amended to a doubling every two years. Later it was again amended to 18 months. Moore's Law was named after Gordon Moore, the founder of Fairchild Electronics, and later the co-founder and CEO of Intel.
The law itself is not a physical law, but an observation of the development of microchips. As such, it could be amended to reflect the current trends. It has since become an interpretation not only of density of microchips, but also of power, and capacity of computers as well. This is logical because users have a better understanding of the performance of computers, rather than the microchips inside the computers.
I am usually at the tail end of the trend. I don't follow the buying habits of power users or gamers, who need to have the fastest machines, or the biggest capacity. I make do with what I think I need, with some allowance to give me leeway. This results in having machine performance that is above average considering my everyday needs.
My PC History
I'm happy with an 8GB RAM, computer (desktop or notebook) with 1TB of storage, if possible. There was a long stretch of time when Moore's law was in my favor, in terms of cost. From 1988 to 2015, or thereabouts, the machines I used cost around 30,000 pesos, including printer, unadjusted for inflation. Adjusted for inflation, 30,000 pesos in 1988 is worth more than 200,000 pesos in 2020. In 1988, I was using an XT-class machine with 2x 1.2MB floppy drives, and a CGA monitor and 640kb RAM. The next machine I had was an AT-class with a 40MB hard disk and a Hercules monochrome monitor. Nowadays, the computer prices allow for a decent powered notebook or an assembled PC for about 40,000 pesos.
Lately, there has been crazy prices for secondary storage. Traditional storage is in hard disks and because the prices have continuously gone down, it is cheap to have archives in external drives. At the same time, solid state devices are becoming very popular and are slowly becoming the standard secondary storage device for notebooks. The only limiting factor is the price of SSDs. Again, at present power users and gamers choose SSDs as their secondary storage device. Additionally, high-end notebooks, by default, use SSDs.
SSDs and SD Cards
Although technically not considered as SSDs, SD cards are becoming a viable secondary storage or archive device. SD and micro-SD cards starting from 128GB and larger have started proliferating and are quite affordable. The intorduciton of the 1TB SD and microSD cards are a game changer. If these aree cheaper than hard disks, then they becomve viable archive or secondary storage devices.
In terms of read/write speeds, SD cards are still slightly slower than hard disks, and much slower than SSDs. Again, the newer model SD cards have improved speeds comparable to 7200RPM hard disks.
The first commercial 1TB SD cards were introduced in 2019. Currently, there are 1TB SD cards selling on Lazada at absurd prices ranging from 500+ pesos to as low as 200 pesos or lower. A rule of thumb whne buying online is that if its too good to be true, then most probably it isn't true. In 2019, the price of a 1TB SD card was close to $500. Now there are 1TB SD cards selling from $3 to $10.
SD Concerns
There is also the quality concern. If the read/write speed is not fast enough, then it's not worth it. There is also a concern for a large percentage of defective products. There are reviews where the buyer experienced one defective card out of the 5 they bought. Finally, SSD and SD cards have the same perception issues, regarding their lifetime. Supposedly, these devices can last up to 10 years. However, SD cards suffer from usage burnout. Each sector or an SD card can only be overwritten a finite number of times, which is around 100,000 write cycles.
If you use the SD card as an archive or backup storage device, then you would not be writing over it so much. The concern about quality comes up alongside the authenticity. If it is a fake product, then it might not last the whole 100,000 write cycles, the full capacity (1TB), and the read/write speed.
For now, I am tempted to test these cheap 1TB SD cards, if these are only 500 pesos each. I can have 4TB of backup storage for about 2,000 pesos. Current HD prices are about 7,000 pesos for a single 4TB external drive.
Something to think about.
