>>1224987>what can I use to organize an offline archive?If you write once, but read many, an SMR (shingled magnetic recording) hard drive is the cheaper alternative. SMR is extremely slow once it gets fragmented such as if you write and delete files. If you only add files and never delete, then SMR is a lower cost alternative to regular hard drives (CMR).
SSD are bad for archival because the signal on them degrades much more quickly than with magnetic hard drives. As for magnetic hard drives, I copy the contents to another hard drive in order to refresh the magnetic bits written onto the drive platter surface. Over time, the magnetism of each bit on the platter surface begins to wane. So they do need to be refreshed on the same drive. I simply copy to another drive and then re-verify the contents.
