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Are there any reasonably scientific "death matches" like these for 2.5" spinning hard drives?

Edit: clarification

The 2.5" market has gone almost entirely SSD.

I, too, would like to see more regular SSD death matches.

Particularly given that almost no SSD review says a single word about reliability, which is my principal concern.

Reviewers can't really believe anything the vendors say and can't afford to run hundreds of SSDs for years to gather real data so there's not much they can say. By the time there is real-world experience with an SSD model it's probably obsolete anyway.

Yep. But that's a problem...

There isn't really a compelling reason to run significant storage off 2.5" HDDs anymore -- before SSDs 10k or 15k 2.5" HDDs made sense (access time), but nowadays...

Here's a compelling reason: cheap, portable mass storage. Eg. USB3/Thunderbolt-powered multi-terabyte drives that fit in a backpack and don't require external power.

A 3.5" drive fits in most backpacks, and it can be powered of USB 3.

Not easily. Even an energy-saving drive will probably draw 15 watts of spinup current.

Though of course you can fit a 12v/2a adapter in the backpack next to the drive.

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