expired
4TB Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive
$76
$116
34% off
or less w/ 2.5% SD Cashback + Free S/Hat Dell Technologies
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or less w/ 2.5% SD Cashback + Free S/Hat Dell TechnologiesDeal Details
Update: This popular offer is available again
Dell Home & Office has 4TB Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive on sale for $75.99. To earn 2.5% in Slickdeals Cashback, before purchase, follow the cashback instructions below. Shipping is free.
Thanks to Deal Editor iconian for finding this deal.
Dell Home & Office has 4TB Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive on sale for $75.99. To earn 2.5% in Slickdeals Cashback, before purchase, follow the cashback instructions below. Shipping is free.
Thanks to Deal Editor iconian for finding this deal.
Editor's Notes
Written by persian_mafia | Staff- About this deal:
- This is $40 Off (34.48% Savings) off the list price of $116
- This offer also beats our previous popular deal from earlier this month by $4.
- Reviews:
- 4.7 out of 5 stars ratings based on over 33,000 Amazon customer reviews.
- About this store:
- For Dell's consumer terms of sale click here. -persian_mafia
Community Notes
About the Poster
Deal Details
Community Notes
About the Poster
Update: This popular offer is available again
Dell Home & Office has 4TB Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive on sale for $75.99. To earn 2.5% in Slickdeals Cashback, before purchase, follow the cashback instructions below. Shipping is free.
Thanks to Deal Editor iconian for finding this deal.
Dell Home & Office has 4TB Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive on sale for $75.99. To earn 2.5% in Slickdeals Cashback, before purchase, follow the cashback instructions below. Shipping is free.
Thanks to Deal Editor iconian for finding this deal.
Editor's Notes
Written by persian_mafia | Staff- About this deal:
- This is $40 Off (34.48% Savings) off the list price of $116
- This offer also beats our previous popular deal from earlier this month by $4.
- Reviews:
- 4.7 out of 5 stars ratings based on over 33,000 Amazon customer reviews.
- About this store:
- For Dell's consumer terms of sale click here. -persian_mafia
Community Voting
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Top Comments
In my opinion long term storage (not connected to a pc) go hard drive. The data should be readable in 10-20-30 years from your fireproof safe. The medium is cheap enough compared to others you could buy two of these 4tb drives before you hit the price of a 2tb SSD. Even if you leave one connected to your pc constantly it should be fine long term if not accessed often.
SSD's are faster and more reliable for everyday use, but when they fail they typically don't give any warning. If you don't BSOD you will have errors reading and saving data then maybe a no boot media found error when restarting or things might work again for awhile until it happens again. In my experience it's very rare, but I have seen it happen and data be unrecoverable. With a hard drive you will have mechanical sounds (clicking, grinding) and greatly reduced performance speeds, but data may be accessed for awhile until it really gets too bad for any normal recovery attempt. In either case at the first time of something odd happening back up your data even if you have to buy a new drive full price same day, it's cheaper then losing everything or paying for an expensive data recovery.
Long term storage of a ssd might be a bad idea as well. Thumb drives need to be plugged in every 5-10 years or you risk losing all the data on them if they completely lose their electrical charge. I have not researched if an ssd could have the same issue, but it might. I won't personally use an SSD for long term storage because it's cost prohibitive to me, but if you go that route you should check that out. To me it makes no sense to spend like $100 a TB for something that will be barely used over 5-10+ years.
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60 Comments
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Fast external drives exist, those have:
- SSD or
- 3.5inch HDDs
- with direct external power.
An SSD can be powered over the USB port and will be fast.Any spinning disk powered only by the USB port(s) will be really slow.
How about all the drives we pop in our cell phones? I guess they will also lose their charge if left in our desk too long?
I have trouble finding anyone giving an exact number, but most places basically say the question is a moot point when you follow best practices for backing up data. If you have old flash drives laying around because you upgraded to newer models, the important data on them should already be backed up.
I searched a few different phrases and came up with this stating 10 years.
https://integralmemory.
I have trouble finding anyone giving an exact number, but most places basically say the question is a moot point when you follow best practices for backing up data. If you have old flash drives laying around because you upgraded to newer models, the important data on them should already be backed up.
I searched a few different phrases and came up with this stating 10 years.
https://integralmemory.com/faq/ho...onditions. [integralmemory.com]
Like I said I have a hard time finding anyplace that will make a blanket statement like that. I did find this longer technical information that gave an example of up to 10 years to determine drive endurance. They barely touch on the charge portion but note the drives firmware itself should be taking care of refreshing the charge of the cells during normal operation.
https://www.ni.com/en-us/support/...orage.html
I think it's a much better rundown, but it is pretty complicated and does not specifically give a shelf life for storing data on flash for many years, unplugged, while still being accessible. I was going to include it in my last post but then I had a wall of text and removed it. They focus on the drive still performing. If you lose all your data due to lack of power that does not mean the drive itself is bad, it can very well work for a much longer time if you put data back on it, but you calculate your Drive endurance and use that to determine how many months you should expect it to still work in production.
I also found this, but it fails to address lack of power data loss and gives a blanket large range of 5-10 years. Also it was published August 28th of who knows what year lmao.
https://blog.storagecra
The bottom line is you should never lose all your data due to a flash drive completely discharging, or mechanical drive degrading into inert junk due to time, if you follow the normal best procedures for backing up. That's why it's so hard to find an exact white paper on this issue being studied completely in depth especially with actual testing being done.
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Did you have any magnets or unshielded speakers near them?
Have you ever tried to put your ExHDDs into a cereal bowl and submerge them with milk?
Did you have any magnets or unshielded speakers near them?
Have you ever tried to put your ExHDDs into a cereal bowl and submerge them with milk?
Fast external drives exist, those have:
- SSD or
- 3.5inch HDDs
- with direct external power.
An SSD can be powered over the USB port and will be fast.Any spinning disk powered only by the USB port(s) will be really slow.
Can you link a review or forum to backup this claim?
Can you link a review or forum to backup this claim?
SSDs don't work this way. The 5V power has been sufficient to provide similar throughput running fio.
Test it yourself using your own hardware. Nobody else here has the same HW that you do anyway.
Of course, workload matters, as does the type of disk and controllers involved.
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In my opinion long term storage (not connected to a pc) go hard drive. The data should be readable in 10-20-30 years from your fireproof safe. The medium is cheap enough compared to others you could buy two of these 4tb drives before you hit the price of a 2tb SSD. Even if you leave one connected to your pc constantly it should be fine long term if not accessed often.
SSD's are faster and more reliable for everyday use, but when they fail they typically don't give any warning. If you don't BSOD you will have errors reading and saving data then maybe a no boot media found error when restarting or things might work again for awhile until it happens again. In my experience it's very rare, but I have seen it happen and data be unrecoverable. With a hard drive you will have mechanical sounds (clicking, grinding) and greatly reduced performance speeds, but data may be accessed for awhile until it really gets too bad for any normal recovery attempt. In either case at the first time of something odd happening back up your data even if you have to buy a new drive full price same day, it's cheaper then losing everything or paying for an expensive data recovery.
Long term storage of a ssd might be a bad idea as well. Thumb drives need to be plugged in every 5-10 years or you risk losing all the data on them if they completely lose their electrical charge. I have not researched if an ssd could have the same issue, but it might. I won't personally use an SSD for long term storage because it's cost prohibitive to me, but if you go that route you should check that out. To me it makes no sense to spend like $100 a TB for something that will be barely used over 5-10+ years.
Join The Conversation
Share your experience with the Slickdeals community
Share information with the community. Please follow our Community Guidelines and be kind!