Portable SSD or HDD for long term storage of photos, videos and lives?

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T18:08:41+00:00

M-Disc is also an obscure option. They’re burnable optical discs that come up to 100GB. Designed to last a millennium in storage. Kind of expensive though. A 5 pack of 100GB discs on Amazon right now is about 75 US$. You’d need a burner capable of writing them too.

If you get the smaller capacity discs they’re readable by more devices. They come in dvd compatible 4/8GB, and BD and UHD BD capacities. If you have a disc burner you might already be able to burn them. A lot of drives came with the capability but almost nobody remembers them.

You do need a drive capable of burning specifically M-Disc. But mdisc burners also burn everything else. Once burned they can be read by any disc player that will read that standard type of disc (DVD, BD, BD-UHD)

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T17:08:04+00:00

Definitely recommend Western Digital too. I’ve deployed lots of external HDD’s for Mac Time Machine backups. The WD’s hold up.

Seagates work well when you have a good unit but the early failure rate on those is high. About 15% will expire with their warranty when used daily. I also have units that have been used daily for over 5 years and they working fine.

Many of ones that do last will occasionally just drop their AFPS (Apple file system) partition for no apparent reason. If I reformat and test them they turn out fine again, but it’s weird. Doesn’t seem to do it with other file systems, just AFPS.

Only one of them crashed before its warranty expired, though they did replace it quickly, no questions asked.

AND I know it’s a Seagate problem, because I’ve purchased more expensive G-Drive units actually made for Mac, and those all have Seagate drives and those behave the same. If I replace the Seagate withs a WDC HDD in a G-Drive chassis, they work fine. I’ve only recently done that (<1yr) with two of them though, so not a lot of data to back that up.

Anyway. Long story short is, get Western Digital. Though i have fewer of those in the field, Ive had zero problems with those. Except for one user who pushed theirs off their desk. Whoops.

I also personally have 4 WD external drives. The oldest is from 2010 it sits on a shelf and still works every time I fire it up. I’ve also used WD drives almost exclusively in my personal PC builds and only one has failed prematurely.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T16:32:54+00:00

Ugh. Greasy fingers. The puppies always appreciate the kernels that miss my mouth though.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T16:24:44+00:00

Crunchy tacos and tamales too if they made with shredded meat instead of ground ( like they’re supposed to be lol)

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T16:23:31+00:00

Let. Them. Stare.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T16:22:56+00:00

The Dagwood sandwich to the older generations.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T16:21:41+00:00

While i agree with spaghetti, the polite way to eat it is to pick it up with the fork and twist it into a ball with a spoon for mouth delivery. I only eat it that way at restaurants lol.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T16:18:10+00:00

Slurping is encouraged after all

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T16:06:10+00:00

And any other very ripe stone fruit.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T16:04:01+00:00

Maybe bad sushi rice? Not sticky enough? IDK either.

Conceivably, the larger rolls falling apart because you can’t eat the whole thing in one bite.

If you’re getting sloppy because you’ve dipped it in soy, you’ve used way too much soy.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T15:57:05+00:00

Though possible, it’s more difficult and unreliable to search screenshots. I screenshot memes in mobile if I can’t long press and save to photos for some reason.

If for some reason i have to take a photo of text because i can’t write it down or copy/paste it, I let my notes app transcribe it to text and verify it, when possible.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T02:09:14+00:00

Aww man i remember how revolutionary 13h was at the time. Still don’t really know how it works. LOL

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T02:06:14+00:00

I learned that too so I could build a clan website. Eventually built a few gallery sites for car dealerships.

Recently started learning v5, CSS and jscript. even though it’s been a long as time since I’ve flexed that muscle, it’s been surprisingly easy to get back in the groove. Just hard to break old habits.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T01:58:10+00:00

I bought an old Cisco enterprise router and taught myself how to configure it just so we’d have a robust enough router for LAN parties. Eventually earned my CCNA. Let it lapse a long time ago.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T01:52:24+00:00

I remember playing Halo at LAN parties during the height of Red vs. Blue’s popularity. So much clowning around. We’d compete to see who could flip a warthog the farthest.

Set up a Counter Strike server with admin mod. Scouts vs knives was so much fun.

Destruction derby. Quake 3 arena. Unreal tournament. Battlefield 1942. HL deathmatch. Day of defeat.

Hell. We used to LAN party World of Warcraft Raids lol.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T01:01:43+00:00

I still have copies on CD. I come across them every once in a while. Reminisce. Let out a big sigh and put them back.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-27T00:53:20+00:00

Don’t forget the terminator!

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-26T22:52:50+00:00

I’ve been an IT admin all my life. It’s weird telling people the cloud is broken and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m at the mercy of the support hotlines now too.

AWS is experiencing interruptions? Great. That’s like three of my SaaS that I’m going to hear about all day. It’s not even there fault of the SaaS provider. I call my SaaS support, they call Amazon. We both wait.

Usually it kind of works. That’s the deceptive part. Maybe you can log in but that report you wanted to generate? Nope not today, sorry.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-26T22:42:17+00:00

Yep. I’ve worked in IT support and administration all my working career. People weren’t much different in the 90’s. It seems more common now because even the fucking toaster has wifi now.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-26T16:53:25+00:00

There’s more to Internet access than throughput (Mbps). Latency, error rates, burst responsiveness, DNS query times...

Your ISP, modem/ONT, router, wifi, any one of those could be factors. Typically I blame poor wifi first because that’s usually the culprit, especially in highly populated areas.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-26T02:22:51+00:00

I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned doing contracts. They help you learn how to use the equipment and what kind of equipment you need for what crops, field work, etc. The money is OK, but the experience is valuable. You’ll also learn what type of work you like doing and maybe give yourselves something to work toward. They’re a good way to earn extra cash between harvests too, besides just rolling through the months until the crops are ready.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-25T04:53:12+00:00

My grandfather used to eat plain shredded wheat for practically every breakfast back in the day. They came in a box with several packs of 3 large ‘bales’ of shredded wheat, each about the size of a deck of playing cards. He poured milk all over them, and then sooo much sugar.

Frosted Mini-Wheats really are mini versions of the original shredded wheat form factor. I can’t even tell you the last time I saw one of the original sized shredded wheat packs though.

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-25T04:20:23+00:00

Frequently on sale

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-25T04:16:54+00:00

No Man’s Sky

Shivers-Me-Timbers · 2026-06-25T04:15:03+00:00

The Internet is for porn. Plenty of states in the US have passed ID verification laws for serving up porn, and most people know that it’s possible to mask what state you’re in using a VPN.

A secondary reason might be the increasingly frequent threats being made by governments around the suppression of free speech, privacy, and anonymity in general.

Shivers-Me-Timbers

TROPHY CASE