Recommend an external back up HDD or SSD Quality Brand (for Mac desktop)

I have lost a large number of pictures due to "bit rot" on my older Samsung SSD, so this subject is near and dear to me.

I found this video:


Good video, Ironically I was under the impression HDDs were more durable electronically (not physically) for long term storage.
I thought SSD devices needed to be activated once in a while being its electrically charged storage vs magnetic HDD. I guess both do? I would think still an HDD for long term storage, like sitting in a closet unused would still be better. Yes, I see they make special purpose HDDs.
We currently have an OLD WD 500 mb HDD that works fine and it sits a year or two at a time.
Anyway as you may know we sold our home in record time, stupid fast, multiple offers the first weekend, contract in 2.5 days, closed within 30ish days, now in an apartment while we wait for our new home to be completed, months out near the NC coast.

So to stay busy I am finally going to get and organize 2 decades worth of photos which are a hodgepodge of storage between Shutterfly, the WD 500 mb HDD drive, another Seagate 320 mb compact HDD, and on the 4 desktops pictured, a laptop of two, and my Mac mini (which is much more organized) delete hundreds if not thousands of photos and save a few from each year on a drive, on iCloud and on Shutterfly and chose a few select photos from every year that I will print out for the day I am no longer on this earth with a reasonable amount saved on one HDD should it survive me.
Im actually excited about the idea so I can get rid of these old desk top CPUs once and for all.

One treat will be that I actually have some XRP digital coins on one of them, its been so long I will have to review how to move them about, along with the password safely stored someplace ( I also have my wife in charge of that one *LOL*) Its not a lot so not a big deal to lose them but enough to lets say buy a nice desktop that I dont need in dollar value. More or less it's more the challenge.
Anyway, at this point now, I see I can move everything off a desktop one at a time with the 320 MB Seagate I have not and onto the Mac mini, delete what I dont want, unload what I do want to print to Shutterfly, then, at that point have a new drive to save on a HDD.

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Quantum drives were the ones to get, and APS was OWC before OWC existed. IBM's one line of infamous Deathstars hurt its reputation, but in general Micropolis and old WD were the ones to avoid back then.
 
Buy the cheapest pair of name brand hard drives that fit into a RAID enclosure . It will write your data to each drive in parallel.

I would not trust any specific single drive .

Alternatively buy TWO separate usb drives and backup to each drive.
 
Buy the cheapest pair of name brand hard drives that fit into a RAID enclosure . It will write your data to each drive in parallel.

I would not trust any specific single drive .

Alternatively buy TWO separate usb drives and backup to each drive.
I agree not to trust a specific drive. My use is non critical, the photos I want to keep will be printed out and those some stored on Shutterfly, iCloud and my desktop... The external drive will just be to have them all in one place neat, tidy easily transportable.
When you think about it, hard copies in print are the only universal median that will never be outdated, hopefully when that day comes in the future if all goes well, the current drives will be outdated and obsolete with prints, they are always there.

I know from the passing of my mom and dad, families dont want every single last photograph and those were all in print.
Countless boxes and albums to go through, way to many and had to sort through them, save it the ones my siblings and I wanted and get rid of the rest.

SO with that knowledge, when that day comes for my wife an I, I want to leave my kids some prints, a few from every year and not the insane amount that I have now which will do nothing for them.
 
There are only two actual consumer grade hard drive manufacturers left in the world after all the consolidation - Seagate and Western Digital. If one gets an a drive I would recommend one that has a bare drive that can be recovered. Many have a direct connection to USB now, so if the interface dies one is out of luck. I've seen teardown videos of Seagate drives, and most seem to be bare SATA drives using an interface. Other than that, it might be more expensive to do a bare drive plus an enclosure (and possibly requires more power) but with those one is sure that there's a bare drive and not a proprietary setup to USB.

As for data fading with an SSD, that's kind of a tricky thing because it's dependent on storage conditions. Theoretically it might take dozens up to 100 years for the data to fade, but that depends on heat. It's electrons trapped in a gate oxide, and the electrons slowly leak out. I won't bore anyone with further details. Another issue is that newer tri- or quad- level flash memory might have lower retention times. But for the OP's purposes, I wouldn't worry about wearing out per se. It'll never get to that point. However, to deal with retention, it might make sense to periodically turn one on such that it goes through "wear leveling" where it moves data around even if the data itself doesn't necessarily change. It's something to prevent writes from being concentrated in certain areas (especially with OS system data) but it also helps to restart the retention period.
 
I think after all these posts, many helpful and the last response great.
Since I am only looking to store some photos on a drive, as well as print out many of those photos as a back up and also have those photos in the "cloud" I think that a HDD will be fine. We currently have an OLD WD "MY BOOK" and I see they still sell them, so maybe to keep it simple I will just do that. (or Seagate or Toshiba)
I dont keep it connected to the Mac mini and really dont need to back the mini up and its already backed up on iCloud.

I really do not want to store all that much. I have decades of photos to delete down to select few every year. I know after my moms passing who had albums and albums of photos, my sister painstakingly went through them all over the winter, saved some, send some to her siblings and we has to throw away the rest. I mean, there were a lot and it was a lot of work. My kids, family are not going to want the thousands of photos I have, just select memories.
 
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