https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/nas/71-tib-nas-with-twenty-four-4tb-drives-hasnt-had-a-single-drive-failure-for-ten-years-owner-outlines-key-approaches-to-assure-hdd-longevity

 

My second Unraid server which is for backups only would average around 6 hours per week on-time and once every eight or so weeks 24 hours on-time.

What a shocking revelation, when you don't use something it wears less! 

Except for that trend Iron Mountain is reporting...

On 9/16/2024 at 10:27 AM, whipdancer said:

Except for that trend Iron Mountain is reporting...

Are you referring to the article about people who don't know how to store or handle hard drives giving them to a company like Iron Mountain and then finding out, years later, that they were garbage (because the original owners of the hard drives didn't know how to store or handle hard drives in the first place)?  That's how I read that article.

Edited November 8, 2024Nov 8 by TimTheSettler

On 9/16/2024 at 3:49 AM, Kilrah said:

What a shocking revelation, when you don't use something it wears less! 

 

Yeah, that article is misleading as is most articles out there nowadays.

On 11/7/2024 at 8:37 PM, TimTheSettler said:

Are you referring to the article about people who don't know how to store or handle hard drives giving them to a company like Iron Mountain and then finding out, years later, that they were garbage (because the original owners of the hard drives didn't know how to store or handle hard drives in the first place)?  That's how I read that article.

Which article are you referring to?

On 11/11/2024 at 3:54 PM, whipdancer said:

Which article are you referring to?

 

 

On 11/7/2024 at 8:37 PM, TimTheSettler said:

Are you referring to the article about people who don't know how to store or handle hard drives giving them to a company like Iron Mountain and then finding out, years later, that they were garbage (because the original owners of the hard drives didn't know how to store or handle hard drives in the first place)?  That's how I read that article.

I re-read that article. Where does it say that the original owners didn't know how to store or handle the drives? It mentions a few reasons - but only 1 of them is related to the drive itself - "Some arrive on hard drives that have already begun to fail..."

Does this paragraph mean the original owners were mishandling the drives?

Quote

The saddest revelation in the article is that Koszela says a typical scenario is Iron Mountain will receive a new project from a client on two brand new hard drives—one with the original data and the other as a backup—and both will be "bricks." The client figured as long as the drives were stored in optimal conditions 20 years ago, they would be fine today since they weren't being used the whole time, but that clearly isn't the case.

I would put that on Iron Mountain - why would they offer long-term storage of a hard-drive when their storage methodology isn't actually promoting the longevity of the drive?

Why would you expect any company that isn't involved in the technical details of hard drive operation to know that copying data onto a hard drive and then putting that hard drive into cold storage is a bad idea? My focus is primarily DevOps and DR/BC - and I have never had anyone bring up the fact that hard drives are not suitable for long term cold storage. Now that I've read about it, I get it. But why should I have known it was an issue previously?

1 hour ago, whipdancer said:

I would put that on Iron Mountain - why would they offer long-term storage of a hard-drive when their storage methodology isn't actually promoting the longevity of the drive?

 

You make a lot of good points.  Did the client give the drives to IRN right away or after some time?  Did anyone confirm that the drives were good before going into storage?  I guess I don't see how the hard drives could become bricks just sitting in storage.  I understand the concept of bit rot but bit rot leads to corruption, not a completely bricked drive.  Someone in that article is either jumping to conclusions or withholding some of the details.

 

I have old floppies still lying around and an old 400MB hard drive that I've been meaning to check out.  Maybe it's time I did that.

I was reading some more about this and realized that the components in the drive can seize up over time.  Then I remembered that I have some old CD-ROM drives where the tray got stuck because the drive belt wore out.  But even in those cases you can replace the broken component.  Same with hard drives, especially considering that recovery companies do just that, replace worn out or broken components so that you can get your data.

 

Anyway, I guess my point is that the story doesn't quite add up.  Even a hard drive sitting in storage could probably be recovered, especially if the contents are valuable.

Recovering a failed hard drive can sometimes be successful.  But it has a cost in both parts (if available) and labor.

 

But we aren't talking about an old disk drive sitting in someone's desk drawer.  This was a commercial archiving firm with likely thousands of drives.