I need HDD or sata SSD for my pictures videos that I want to keep
I use spinning hard disks to store my photos and videos. It's partly a question of cost. A 4TB hard disk is often cheaper than a 4TB SSD. Above 4TB, SSDs tend to get expensive.
More importantly, all disks can die at any time. It doesn't matter if they're old hard disks or solid state drives. Don't count o a drive working forever.
If a hard disk stops working, there's a chance a professional data recovery agency might be able to salvage lost files. When an SSD dies, it may be impossible to recover anything. That's why you need multiple backups.
Keep at least 3 copies of any important photos on three different drives, USB sticks, portable disks, or in the Cloud, to guard against hardware failure, accidental deletion or Ransomware.
What should I look for when buying SSD/HDD
I've stopped buying portable USB3 hard disk drives because I think they run too hot (at least +50°C). Instead I buy 3.5inch SATA hard disks and install them in well ventilated computers where they run much cooler (+35°C).
I group hard disks and SSDs into three categories:
1). Well known (expensive) brands such as Western Digital, Toshiba, Seagate, Samsung, Sandisk, Crucial, Kingston.
2). Less well known brands (cheaper) but still fairly reliable, Patriot, PNY, Intenso.
3). Strange named brands (really cheap) on AliExpress and Amazon.
I buy from categories 1). and 2). but not from 3). I buy other things from AliExpress, but not hard disks or SSDs, even if they have a well known brand name. Chances are they're fake and it's a long way to send things back to China when they go bad.
If you have any shops or mail order dealers in Romania with a good reputation, I'd buy from them.
I see that Amazon.com ship to Romania, but the delivery costs may be too high. There might also be import duty and local sales tax added on entry at customs.
For hard disks, consider WD, Seagate and Toshiba. If you can afford a drive larger than 1TB, it's cheaper per Terabyte to buy 2TB, 3TB or 4TB, than 500GB or 1TB. Stick to hard disks for photos and videos.
For SSDs, consider Samsung, Sandisk, Crucial and Kingston. I've had problems with Lexar SATA SSDs and have stopped using them. SSDs are a good choice for use as Windows (or Linux) boot drives, especially M.2 (NVMe), where the extra speed improves loading times.
You don't normally need fast loading times for archiving a large collection of photos, so use a hard disk. An exception might be editing huge RAW files (50MB+) in PhotoShop when an SSD would be faster.
Be careful when buying hard disks. They come in two versions. CMR and SMR.
These days, I stick to CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording), because they don't slow down as badly as SMR drives when files get fragmented.
Shingle Magnetic Recording drives use a technique of overlapping tracks, to squeeze more GB on to the disk, but SMR can get horribly slow after deleting unwanted files and then saving new files.
https://www.howtogeek.com/803276/cmr-vs.-smr-hard-drives-whats-the-difference/
There's a good chance many portable USB3 spinning hard disks are SMR. OK for archives you'll hardly ever touch, but no good if you add and delete photo files on a daily basis. Steer clear of SMR.
It's very difficult to tell if a USB hard drive is SMR or CMR. Chances are they're SMR, which makes them cheaper per Gigabyte.
With bare drives for use inside a computer, you can look up the part number and check if it's CMR or SMR. My advice is to buy CMR only, not SMR.
Let us know if you can fit 3.5in desktop (or 2.5in laptop) SATA hard disks in your computer and provide the names of a few retailers in Romania, so we can advise.
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