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The original was posted on /r/datahoarder by /u/gauthier-th on 2025-08-07 12:42:10+00:00.

Hi!

For the past few days, I’ve been seriously wondering whether SSDs are worth it compared to HDDs for media storage with torrenting, to expend my current setup. I’m comparing enterprise HDDs and basic consumer SSDs here, to have 10-20TB of storage.

According to my rough calculations (taking into account the power consumption of a HDD) these SSDs are twice as expensive as HDDs for an equivalent storage space.

What I’m doing with my storage: downloading stuff (mostly Linux ISOs) and seeding them for years, to maintain my ratio. Sometimes I delete some items and then download something else, but it doesn’t happen that often.

From what I understood, having HDDs read random chunks 24/7 is using the heads. Will my HDDs have a significant shorter lifespan because of this? (e.g 2-3 years lifespan instead of 5+ years)

On the other hand, SSDs wear out when you write to them, but random reads do not damage them. Should they have in average an higher lifespan? (7-8 years?). In this case, wouldn’t SSDs be a better choice?

I tried to gather information here and elsewhere, but I didn’t find many opinions for this use case, especially if it’s worth at this scale. All thoughts are welcome!