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Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 days ago by some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

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My father told me he wanted to make USB flash drives of all the scanned and digitized family photos and other assorted letters and mementos. He planned to distribute them to all family members hoping that at least one set would survive. When I explained that they ought to be recipes to new media every N number of years or risk deteriorating or becoming unreadable (like a floppy disk when you have no floppy drive), he was genuinely shocked. He lost interest in the project that he’d thought was so bullet proof.

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[-] francisfordpoopola@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

Buy Spinrite. It's not perfect but it's the best thing available for drive maintenance and recovery. I have used it for over 10 years. If the drive is dying it'll take forever, but I've recovered data that was nearly gone due to sector loss. It goes down to the bit level BTW. Someday Steve will release v7 .. someday.

[-] n3m37h@sh.itjust.works 7 points 6 days ago

This is the first time I've seen anyone else talk about SpinRite, known about it a long time too

[-] LostXOR@fedia.io 6 points 6 days ago

If your data is really important, you should send it to a reputable data recovery service. Using the drive any more (even with a tool like SpinRite) risks further damage.

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[-] vext01@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 6 days ago

These people haven't heard of zfs then?

[-] tibi@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

Zfs is just software raid, not an archival /backup solution. Sure, you can hold data on a zfs array for long term, but not without active maintenance (powering the drives periodically, replacing old drives, doing some kind of data refresh / scrubbing) and backups.

[-] Wilzax@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I have a feeling USB drives will be readable for a long time to come, considering that we still use the standard almoat everywhere, nearly 28 years after its introduction.

That said, copying the data from old archives into new formats is always a good idea

Edit: I was envisioning actual external hard disk or solid state drives accessible using a USB connection. Thumb drives and other ultra-portable data formats are notorious for poor data integrity over time.

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 days ago

I have a feeling USB drives will be readable for a long time to come

The drives may still be useful, but the data will long be gone. I have a flash drive from 06 that was last used in like 08 09 and most of it's data was gone by 2019. The drive itself is fine. But what was on it has slowly faded away.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Note though that usb Sticks (if you mean that with USB drives) usually get the worst, cheapest quality flash. It's a lottery, and expect nothing in no-name sticks.

* quality in yield, ssd > sd-card/emmc > flash sticks

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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024

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