Old SATA hard drives are the best cold storage I own, and they cost me almost nothing
2 old SATA drives now hold my archive, and they were drives I already had
The author stores rarely accessed data on two old 1TB and 2TB SATA hard drives, which they purchased years ago for minimal cost. They cite the drives' cheap price, reliability when unplugged, and ease of reading data years later as reasons why they are well-suited for cold storage. While these drives have a limited capacity, they are sufficient for an archive of finished files and free up more expensive storage space for frequently used data.
The author emphasizes that these drives are not part of their backup scheme following the 3-2-1 rule, but they do provide redundancy by using multiple copies of important data under a 3-2-1 backup strategy. Before using the drives for cold storage, they recommend running a SMART extended self-test and a full read of its surface to ensure the drive is functioning properly.
Written by urgent.news from XDA Developers's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
