SSDs safe in the mail?

[tinpanalley]

Right now, my parents and I have a little system going where I send them video content shipped from us here in France to the US on 2 or 3 big USB flash drives (programs, music, etc). We send them there, they send them back and on and on, about 4 times a year. We both have fibre optic internet but I haven't found a system that lets me share stuff with them fast via an online connection so for the time being this is what we do and it works relatively well.
But in light of this recent article about the lifespan of SSD drives, and the price of good quality drives dropping, I'm wondering whether it wouldn't make more sense to buy just one 250GB SSD instead of a bunch of 64GB USB flash drives. But my question for those of you out there who might know more about this is, can an SSD in a padded package be safely sent back and forth in the mail like these flash drives can or is that just asking for trouble?

Thanks for any input!

 

[hhhd1]

Buy a dedicated server for less than 20 euros per month, with 1tb or more of space, and setup ftp server on it.

You could also find less than 10 euros per month for 500gb

 

[DeviousTrap]

Buy a dedicated server for less than 20 euros per month, with 1tb or more of space, and setup ftp server on it.

You could also find less than 10 euros per month for 500gb

Even simpler, Google Drive!

1TB is $10 a month. Create a folder on your google drive, share it with whoever you want. You both can upload/download from the same space with separate Google accounts.

 

[Berliner]

SSDs and flash drives are about the same, so there should be no differences in shipping.

 

[tinpanalley]

Buy a dedicated server for less than 20 euros per month, with 1tb or more of space, and setup ftp server on it.

You could also find less than 10 euros per month for 500gb

Interesting idea... But what kind of upload and download speeds would one get from that? Is there no quick way to copy directly with something like teamviewer?

 

[Topweasel]

Yeah dodge customs and shipping fee's and use a cloud storage solution. If you both can afford fibre networks then just by space on a cloud storage network like Dropbox, Onedrive, or Google Drive.

1TB on Onedrive is 6.99 a month and offers access to Office 365.

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/

Edit: rates would be pretty quick all three have massive data farms with ungodly internet speeds. If you are really worried about performance you could use a service like Amazon, that's meant to handle extreme network performances. None of these or some other web solutions are going to be as slow as collecting GBs of information and mailing them internationally.

 

[tinpanalley]

Even simpler, Google Drive!





1TB is $10 a month. Create a folder on your google drive, share it with whoever you want. You both can upload/download from the same space with separate Google accounts.

Well now this option is definitely a speed problem. I can never upload or download anything quickly using Google Drive or dropbox. They must have a cap on data transfer rates.

 

[tinpanalley]

SSDs and flash drives are about the same, so there should be no differences in shipping.

Shipping isn't what i was worried about, but rather the physical safety of the drive. Obviously you wouldn't send a regular optical drive in the mail but i thought these might be sturdier?

 

[razel]

SSDs are perfectly safe in the mail especially if you use a padded envelope. I agree, regardless of a cloud file storage you use, it's your upload speed that'll limit you. That's not to mention the fact that some ISPs, like here in the US are now putting data limit caps on Internet. My folks currently are getting warnings about reaching 150GB of download from AT&T DSL. How freaking sad. I inspected their traffic and it's just the daily watching of videos from them and the grandkids. I told them to leave that ISP as soon as their contract expires.

Hopefully you won't run into that issue.

 

[hhhd1]

Interesting idea... But what kind of upload and download speeds would one get from that? Is there no quick way to copy directly with something like teamviewer?

Based on comments by the others, it seems google drive offer is quite competitive, if you want something to setup yourself, you can get this:

download/upload speeds is 100mbps , which will be 10 megabyte per second, enough to stream High def videos if you setup windows sharing (samba).

https://www.kimsufi.com/fr/index.xml

 

[KingFatty]

Why not just keep the original packaging and mail the SSD as though it was mailed when first delivered from Amazon or Newegg or whoever you bought it from and had it first mailed to you?

 

[GlacierFreeze]

What is this the 1980s with sneaker net?

Go with an online solution. lol

 

[Topweasel]

Well now this option is definitely a speed problem. I can never upload or download anything quickly using Google Drive or dropbox. They must have a cap on data transfer rates.

Your mailing something out in the slowest service possible. How is copying a file and letting it upload to the internet in whatever time it takes and letting the person then download it when they are ready going to be slower then mailing something internationally.

As for the drives physically. They are thin and dense plastic. So they should take a decent beating. But if a forklift or a heavy enough cart wheel rolls over them then they are dead. Just put it in a bubble sleeve and you should be fine. Flash wise the loss of one drive would ping you a little bit because as a standalone drive its much more expensive then one thumb drive. But assuming a full packages destruction, a 128GB at ~$90 would be about the same price as losing 4 32GB thumb drives.

 

[Topweasel]

When you say you have fibre, whose fibre service are you using? It might be you that has the upload issue not them.

 

[tinpanalley]

What is this the 1980s with sneaker net?

Go with an online solution. lol

I never automatically assume a newer technology is better by virtue of being newer. More often, it's not.

 

[Cerb]

Tape it in an antistat bag, and ship it in a padded envelope or padded small box (such as the box it came in, wrapped up or inverted). Physically, I'd worry more about the box getting dented or something, and the SSD getting bent or the like, damaging a connector, not that the SSD should be susceptible to shock. Or, put it in a USB enclosure, to give some ESD protection and ease of use, instead of the antistat bag.

 

[tinpanalley]

When you say you have fibre, whose fibre service are you using? It might be you that has the upload issue not them.

Well, you probably wouldn't know the ISPs in Paris, but I get 200 down and 10 up.

 

[tinpanalley]

Your mailing something out in the slowest service possible. How is copying a file and letting it upload to the internet in whatever time it takes and letting the person then download it when they are ready going to be slower then mailing something internationally.

Speed of delivery doesn't matter to us. There's no rush. But time spent uploading/downloading stuff is a pain. Copying to flash storage is super fast via USB3.0 or SATA. And then its already ON the media it needs to be on for playing back. That's all, practicality.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

What is this the 1980s with sneaker net?

Go with an online solution. lol

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

Using an old Ford Focus ($10,000), some coffee ($10), and a padded box full of 3TB hard drives, ($3,500) I can get 100TB of data from here to Chicago in 6 hours. 8 if traffic is bad. That's approximately 28 Gbps. (Comparable to a dedicated OC-768.)

 

[tinpanalley]

So any recommendations for servers that aren't the free ones you can get online? Just to explore that route? I've got bluehost for email and web hosting but they don't do server space hosting.

 

[ronbo613]

So any recommendations for servers that aren't the free ones you can get online? Just to explore that route? I've got bluehost for email and web hosting but they don't do server space hosting.

I upload files to my shared web hosting server and link to them so people can download them. Everybody has different up/down speeds, but packing a drive then posting or shipping it can't be faster than even a slow connection. Download the files to a computer drive overnight.

 

[Topweasel]

Speed of delivery doesn't matter to us. There's no rush. But time spent uploading/downloading stuff is a pain. Copying to flash storage is super fast via USB3.0 or SATA. And then its already ON the media it needs to be on for playing back. That's all, practicality.

But a drop box, drive folder, or Onedrive folder is just as easy as copying the files from one folder to another on your C: drive and just let letting the app and your ISP do the rest.

As for the uploads. Your at fault there 10 up is just over a 1MB a second. So 100GB means 28 hours. Where if the download rate is the same as yours that same content at full rate you could get that in 1.4 hours assuming your allowed the full rate Probably not probably a single connection is limited to 30-40 mbs but I don't have fast enough internet to test it.

There isn't any practicality in what you are suggesting. For starters I am assuming that you don't instantly have 100+GB to share. Chances are you download a file here and there for several days or weeks. So instead of waiting till you have amassed a library of info to share with pops, just put the stuff in the sync folder as it is downloaded in the first place. If it's media then the real practicality is having it available to all devices and computers its not already on (like cell phones) where as the device (tablet or cellphone) in your case would need to have a usb port, or it would only be viewable at home on the computer. In the case of upload as you go the content can be viewed not only quicker then mailing it, but then you don't have to package up 100GB+ worth of information before its viewable to others.

 

[Topweasel]

So any recommendations for servers that aren't the free ones you can get online? Just to explore that route? I've got bluehost for email and web hosting but they don't do server space hosting.

Azure and Amazons service (I think EC3) are two that I know of. They would probably have some of the better rates, easy to set up, and have the worlds best connection rates. But these are obviously the more public and ToS'd to death hosting routes.

But with a hosted server like that you still run into your upload issue unless you are actually downloading the content that you are sharing there.

 

[tinpanalley]

I should probably have been more precise on usage and amounts. Although this was about shipping an SSD in the first place. Nevertheless, because you guys have been suggesting the possibility of an online connection...

- It's always about 128 GB of video.
- The content lives, in our place, on an external HDD linked via USB to a media player.
- The content is used, at my parents', on the USB flash drives or copied to an external HDD as well, and USB into a media player.

I don't stream video or music or store video or music online. Ever. I would never watch any film or television on a mobile device or any device that wasn't a television. Ever. Neither would they.
I play discs or files on drives. In looking for an online solution, it was just as a way of transferring the content rather than mailing it. That's all. So it's never gonna live on a server to be played from there. I was hoping it could be sent via online connection to the computer from where it will then be copied to its final location. I thought you could just hook up TeamViewer, and copy from here to there.

Why wouldn't I host on a server, stream from the server, update the server to make it available on all devices, keep media players linked to the server, etc etc etc. Because that's just not the way I do it. And there is no way my parents will do any of that. And while I really appreciate the knowledge and suggestions, that's also not what I asked. But I DO see tremendos value in finding a way to send them videos online rather than with the method of mailing a drive. It's just that each video is usually 500 to 700 MB. Sometimes more when it's a film. Anyway, I do appreciate the help. It's just that a lot of it is coming off as, "this is how you SHOULD do it unless you're a moron".

 

[Topweasel]

I should probably have been more precise on usage and amounts. Although this was about shipping an SSD in the first place. Nevertheless, because you guys have been suggesting the possibility of an online connection...

- It's always about 128 GB of video.
- The content lives, in our place, on an external HDD linked via USB to a media player.
- The content is used, at my parents', on the USB flash drives or copied to an external HDD as well, and USB into a media player.

I don't stream video or music or store video or music online. Ever. I would never watch any film or television on a mobile device or any device that wasn't a television. Ever. Neither would they.
I play discs or files on drives. In looking for an online solution, it was just as a way of transferring the content rather than mailing it. That's all. So it's never gonna live on a server to be played from there. I was hoping it could be sent via online connection to the computer from where it will then be copied to its final location. I thought you could just hook up TeamViewer, and copy from here to there.

Why wouldn't I host on a server, stream from the server, update the server to make it available on all devices, keep media players linked to the server, etc etc etc. Because that's just not the way I do it. And there is no way my parents will do any of that. And while I really appreciate the knowledge and suggestions, that's also not what I asked. But I DO see tremendos value in finding a way to send them videos online rather than with the method of mailing a drive. It's just that each video is usually 500 to 700 MB. Sometimes more when it's a film. Anyway, I do appreciate the help. It's just that a lot of it is coming off as, "this is how you SHOULD do it unless you're a moron".

No one is calling you a moron. You mentioned the practicality of data already being on a USB drive that you snail mailed to your parents. I was just listing another way that web hosted data would actually be more "practical". You can take it or leave it if you want. We are just here giving you alternatives for shipping out a collection of data snail mail that could be more convenient for you. But having content that can just be copied to that same practical USB stick at home isn't less practical then shipping out relatively small packets of data at a time. Would almost make more sense to build the library up to 3 TB and then just give him the drive when you go to visit.

Also I don't quiet get what you mean by it's always 128GB of data. Is it the exact same data each time? Or is that just the total it's usually at by the time you send it to your dad? Or are you downloading/creating 128GB of data in a single day? Because again my point is if today I download a 4GB file and add it to a Dropbox it will take about 4 hours to upload at your speed. Therefore I do it at night and by the time I wake up its already on the web. If its 16GB its on the web by the time I get home from work. Meaning with in a day of getting the content it would be accessible to your dad, instead of waiting 2-3-4 weeks or how ever long it takes to have 128GB worth of new content to send to your father.

At that point he could have your account linked on his computer and have it set to auto download the files which again would be on his computer 20 times quicker then you uploaded them. Before he knows it he would already have the content and can even then move it to an SSD or thumb drive and watch it where ever he would in normal circumstances. By moving it as opposed to copying it he would clear it out of the dropbox/Gdrive/onedrive as soon as he has it so the drive doesn't get cluttered.

But again if it's just physical integrity and not possible alternatives you are worried about. It's not any more dangerous then sending out the same money valued Thumb drives.