The end of the Hard Disks - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Picuino
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 07:34:33 pm
content: I have read several articles with the same title during the last years, giving the HDD as finished.For me the HDD will still be indispensable for many years to come as a mass storage medium.Forbes: Death Of The Hard Disk Could Come Sooner Than We Thoughthttps://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2021/08/03/death-of-the-hard-disk-could-come-sooner-than-we-thought/?sh=6a27ded5146bTECHTARGET: Hard disk drives to remain dominant storage media in 2022https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/feature/Hard-disk-drives-to-remain-dominant-storage-mediaEdit:Title

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 08:05:48 pm
content: are you sure ?samsung already sells 30TB ssd drives, whereas the biggest hard drive I know of it "only" 20TB in size.ok the 20TB hard drive costs 10x less than the 30TB ssd, but in 5 years at most the ssd price will drop at the same level.mass storage will come soon to ssd, and hard drives will remain only for their lower price.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 08:19:42 pm
content: Yeah, the end for personal devices - desktop computers, laptops, etc - sure. It has already happened for the most part.But SSDs are still way too expensive per storage unit for large capacities, and the need for more storage is going to increase exponentially, at least on servers.I don't know when the cost of SSDs will plummet enough to be a better alternative. But with the production issues we're currently experiencing in the semiconductor industry, I do not expect that to happen within 5 years. We still don't even know if things are gonna be completely back to "normal" within 5 years - not to mention being able to increase production several fold.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 08:30:31 pm
content: Not so sure about that. We stopped buying non SSD storage off Amazon about 2 years ago. We have no hard disks at all anywhere globally any more.Think we have 500TB just in one amazon region...

author: spostma
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:02:05 pm
content: harddisks are irreplaceable for long-term backups!if you leave a MLC SSD unpowered and uncooled for some years,you will see massive data corruption.SSDs need to be powered up regularly, so the firmware can do a background refresh data of flash cells that leak.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:05:13 pm
content: Hard disks don't spin up either and have mechanical problems. Tape rollers degrade as well.Keep your data moving and verified.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:16:50 pm
content: The end of the hard drive is on the way. Who'd want a hard drive in a laptop, where the advantages of an SSD are huge, particularly in terms of robustness?In desktops, if you are really determined to cheap out, I think there are some HDD only systems, but if you pay a bit more you get an SSD/HDD system with much faster boots and program loads. I can see why the cheap 1TB HDDs sell, but I can't see why 1TB Blacks are still selling, at a price well into SSD territory.The niche for HDDs is where you want a lot storage and you are not bothered about speed, but cost is important. 4TB USB HDDs used for backups for instance.Another is for surveillance systems, where speed isn't important, but the limited write life of SSDs is. I can't see SSDs ousting HDDs in those areas any time soon.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:21:37 pm
content: Quote from: spostma on July 18, 2022, 09:02:05 pmThe SSD problem gets worse as the TBW increases, and it's much worse with QLC.You get bit decay in HDDs too, as the magnetisation patterns decay over time. It's as well to do a read/rewrite in place about every year.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:24:51 pm
content: HDD storage is provided by the Cloud operators as a service, do not think it is going to go away any time soon.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:30:19 pm
content: All my PCs have been changed over to SSDs. The HDs that were the main drive are now relegated to holding a cloned image of the SSD for backup. But they are not connected at all until needed for a new clone or an emergency restoration.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:32:39 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on July 18, 2022, 09:24:51 pmMight be surprised there. If you buy a few million SSDs they get rather cheap. HDDs require more power, more cooling and have lower density too.Watch this space.

author: rfeecs
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:36:19 pm
content: Well, there's always magnetic tape.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:38:36 pm
content: Rotting spindles and knackered transports. That’s dying tooPrint it out on archive and buy a fire safeIncidentally I know someone who works at the national archives here and this is a whole discipline which is really really deep.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:45:07 pm
content: Quote from: rfeecs on July 18, 2022, 09:36:19 pmjust bought qty=12 DDS2 cartridges, just in case

author: Picuino
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:50:38 pm
content: Quote from: spostma on July 18, 2022, 09:02:05 pmAnd I don't trust cloud services enough to leave my information there. If I were in the management of a company, I would trust them even less.

author: jorgeh
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 09:56:32 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on July 18, 2022, 09:45:07 pmdds2 ? I would say why??, but probably for a heavy regulated industry.and I personally do no longer sell any device that uses an HDD as the main drive. notebooks i just install SSD's. but as other said for large storage capacity as an end user I will choose an HDD.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:03:36 pm
content: The best ever is to have a fiber channel iSCSI engine combined with a ram-disk that exports things to a sATA interface or directly to the PCI.Basically, you don't have a storage device locally, you just have a super fast optic link and a mechanism that gets and sends disk blocks over the optic fiber channel.I saw it in an hack-camp meeting, home made with cheap fpga and low spec stuff, so ... relatively slow (25Mbyte/sec read/write), but impressive and I am still shocked for what one could achieve if done with high-spec modern technology (e.g. faster fpga than a poor SP6, 2GBps instead of 40Mbps optic trans-receiver, DDR4@xxxGhz instead of SDRAM@133Mhz, etc)will it be the future of storage? or just too much cyberpunk? we will see

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:07:15 pm
content: All our storage was DAS because redundancy and distribution was at the software level not the hardwareLatency is important. iSCSI is shit for that. Thus 64TB of DAS enterprise PCI-E SSD per node…

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:07:38 pm
content: Quote from: jorgeh on July 18, 2022, 09:56:32 pmThey are cheap and funny for my SCSI media-tower, they are also usually good for six years, which is not bad for a temporary backup-media.

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:25:49 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 18, 2022, 09:38:36 pmMake sure you use acid free paper!

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:27:19 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 18, 2022, 10:07:15 pmyup, iSCSI is problematic when latency matters.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:31:29 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on July 18, 2022, 10:07:38 pmDDS2 is only 4GB per cartridge, 8GB with usually achievable compression. It's amazing the way the amount of storage available has increased. As I recall they could only manage 4GB an hour.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:34:12 pm
content: Quote from: Circlotron on July 18, 2022, 10:25:49 pmVellum. British Acts of parliament have always been written on vellum because it resists decay.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:34:54 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 18, 2022, 10:34:12 pmWaste of vellum.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:51:20 pm
content: I think the tipping point is here. I was surprised by how fast CRTs disappeared after introduction of LCDs. Hard drives won't die quite as quickly, but I think if you look around in five years you will find spinning disks only in specialty markets.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 10:54:05 pm
content: Hard drives still have a place where greater capacity for a given cost is required and lower performance is acceptable. High capacity SSDs are not only expensive, but have compromised retention and endurance. MLC is a good compromise on retention and endurance but limits SSD capacity.The increasing problem with hard drives is that their capacity has increased more than their speed, so rebuild time in RAID has become long enough to compromise RAID reliability. Managed filesystems like ZFS should improve this situation but are not universally supported.My PCs boot from HDD RAID which is also used for bulk storage, and SSDs are used for portable storage. I do *not* use SSDs for scratch space because I found that it was wearing through their endurance too quickly, and that was with better MLC SSDs.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 11:01:15 pm
content: Capacity vs endurance is rarely a problem. How often do you write a whole TB disk?

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 11:07:12 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 18, 2022, 11:01:15 pmIt *was* a problem for me, and that was with better MLC disks than the cutting edge higher capacity devices which have a worse endurance. Buying larger devices increases the endurance for a given throughput, but costs proportionally more. I was writing the "whole device" quickly enough to burn through it in a year, versus the 5 year warranty.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 11:27:43 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 18, 2022, 11:01:15 pmIt depends what you are doing. With normal PC use, it's probably at the most 4TB per powered on year. Even for a rubbishy SSD, that's decades, so wear out is hardly a problem. Video editing does a lot of writing. Regular backups to disk involve a lot of writes. Surveillance involves massive mounts of writes.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2022, 11:37:50 pm
content: And for "data centers", there is an enormous amount of writes.

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 12:06:28 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on July 18, 2022, 10:51:20 pmLet's hope the same mentality that thinks vinyl records are superior to properly done CDs doesn't prevail here also.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 12:23:42 am
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 18, 2022, 09:21:37 pmSSD lifetime for most consumers far exceeds the life of the whole computer. I still have SSDs in use that are about 10 years old and the wear indicator shows minimal wear.As for hard drives, I've never had to re-write data. I've had data sitting on my old NAS for about 12 years without a problem (ZFS routinely checks for data corruption). I have drives that are over 25 years old that still read perfectly fine.These issues just don't seem to manifest in normal usage.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 01:12:57 am
content: Quote from: Circlotron on July 19, 2022, 12:06:28 amUnlike magnetic storage, optical storage did not continue scaling because the diffraction limit for the optics was reached. Increased density now requires a better numerical aperture or shorter wavelength, and those have already been stretched. I doubt there will be a generation after Blu-ray. I wonder what happened to near field recording. Magneto-optical drives already used tricks like heat assisted recording and scalloped recording and topped out long ago.Flash has its own scaling limit which has nothing to do with feature size. The floating gate memory cells eventually lack a long enough retention to be useful. The smallest logic process with floating gate memory is currently 28 nanometers. 3D Flash made a huge improvement in density.Hard drives have the paramagnetic limit which has been reached, but there are several options being used to do better so further improvement will happen.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 09:36:37 am
content: Quote from: Circlotron on July 19, 2022, 12:06:28 amThe esoteric audio scene revolves around various things, usually expensive and with no engineering basis, which are supposed to enhance the sound quality by subjective measures. My favourite is "sonically competent mains leads". It's not the same with data storage. HDDs the size of a washing machine, with a 1.25 kW power consumption and a capacity of 500MB are not going to become sought after, because the bits have "almost overpowering presence".There are rational reasons for continuing to use HDDs in some areas. It's hard to see them being supplanted in surveillance systems for a long time. Maybe within five years, USB external drives for backup will disappear.Intel's Optane doesn't have the endurance problems of Flash SSDs, but it's very expensive.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 09:44:45 am
content: I just asked our ops guys what they use in our CCTV box. It’s 4x Crucial MX500 2TB SSDs

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 11:39:04 am
content: You can brag about your company hard earn money or for business purpose ssd.. but ssd price is still 5-10x, no.. hdd wont die anytime soon.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 11:41:43 am
content: They bought them because the 6TB HDD in the box died after 3 months. Not having CCTV coverage was riskier than paying out.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 11:55:02 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 11:41:43 amEarlier this year I got a new security camera system (old one finally failed). The cams use a wireless link and the main unit has nice big display and has (or shall I say had) a 3 TB HDD for data storage (not to run the system). After I got it running I had to check inside and have a look. The HDD is user replaceable but after I shut it off and touched the HDD it was literally so hot it wasn't fun to handle. After a few weeks the HDD just failed. They sent me another HDD but it got really hot the same. I wondered if the thing would format an SSD (the HDDs use SATA) so I bought one - figured if it didn't work I'd use it in a PC. Well it formatted fine and so far no problems, plus it uses less energy.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 12:21:29 pm
content: Quote from: xrunner on July 19, 2022, 11:55:02 amIf you have an HDD with a max power dissipation of about 6W getting hot like that, it sounds like bad engineering.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 12:22:09 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 18, 2022, 10:31:29 pmmy DVDRAMs are also 4GB per cartridge, practically 4GB is *the* unit of my backups, more than enough for text, C and vhdl sources

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 12:44:18 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 19, 2022, 12:21:29 pmAttached is pic of 3TB HDD removed from security cam system. Do you know anything about this brand? I never had any HGST brand before this system.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 01:05:49 pm
content: HGST are Hitachi. They were originally IBM but sold off in 2003 after the whole Deskstar (Deathstar) click of death issues.No comment on them recently. YMMV as always.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 01:16:14 pm
content: I don't think it will be long before 2.5" HDDs get completely replaced by SSDs in the market, the cost per TB difference is becoming quite narrow. 3.5" HDDs are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

author: tunk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 01:23:50 pm
content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGSTAccording to Backblaze some of them have a relatively low failure rate:https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2022/And I have 12 HGST Deskstar 6TB NAS (HDN726060ALE614) in a Dellmd1200 running 45k hours without problems.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 01:26:32 pm
content: Backblaze stats don't track MTTF / MTBF properly. There should be a statistical failure distribution for each drive type and they should be comparable.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 01:28:31 pm
content: My guess is that SSDs will keep replacing HDDs in many applications. However, in areas where price or write endurance matters HDDs will prevail until SSDs can compete here too.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 02:27:00 pm
content: Quote from: xrunner on July 19, 2022, 12:44:18 pmHGST was IBM's HDD business. IBM did very well in the early 3.5" 1" high market and then they had two disastrous products, with huge failure rates - Deskstars aka Deathstars. Then they sold the business to Hitachi. It carried on under Hitachi for a few years and then it was sold to Western Digital. It carried on under WD semi autonomously and their products were directed toward the server end of the market.Last I looked HGST HDDs had the best reliability stats at about 1% annual failure rate, Toshiba were next at about 4%, then came WD and Seagate at much higher rates - around 10% of the top of my head. These were at best crude figures, because the market is very segmented.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 02:47:47 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 19, 2022, 01:16:14 pm2.5" HDDs are really aimed at the laptop market. The typical laptop drives are 5400rpm (slow) because of the power and heat dissipation requirements, and were designed to take rough treatment, even while running, but that was always going to be a difficult engineering challenge. SSDs are much faster, vastly more robust, and use a bit less power.I really can't see why the 2.5" HDD market still exists. You can buy a very respectable 1TB 2.5" SATA drive for about £75 and the mechanical 2.5" drive equivalent - inferior in just about every way - starts from about half that much. I suppose some people just have to have the cheapest..

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 03:07:11 pm
content: otoh it is agreed that hdd for OS is extinct, esp the 2.5" laptop. the price of 120-480GB ssd is bearable and really worth it for OS performance. Anybody who still choose hdd for OS, even for 3.5" PC, albeit they have the full right to do whatever with their own body, have choosen to stay behind in dinasour age and unaware that they are crippling themselves. I was talking data storage 4TB and above for hdd still applicable. 30TB ssd? You can brag any goodness in it, you cant afford it.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 03:28:32 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 19, 2022, 03:07:11 pmI was just looking at ready made desktop PCs on ebuyer at less than £700. Most have a 256GB or 512GB SSD only. Very few have both SSD and HDD, or just HDD. I'm sure about a year back it was mostly SSD and HDD systems.Yes, 4TB and over seems like where HDDs are most applicable.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 04:02:05 pm
content: You dont need extra storage if what you do are only docx, xlsx and some selfie pictures. The os ssd repartitioned will be enough, i have 2 internal extra hdd and 3 external to store videos, photography pictures, offline installers backup etc.. if they all have to be ssd, i'll need sponsorship from your royal majesty..

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 04:21:39 pm
content: People do a lot of hoarding. Clean your shit outEverything I've ever done in the last 40-odd years and macOS takes up 150GB. That includes photos and videos. Grows by about 5GB a year at the moment and most of that is DSLR shots.

author: rob77
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 04:35:04 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 04:21:39 pmdepends on the work you do... try to archive few FPGA projects (whole dev enviroment including VM OS image, software, toolchain...etc...to make sure you can restart the project in the future) you hit 150GB quite quickly.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 05:06:51 pm
content: It's all down to cost for me. I still use hard disks in my media server and for backup but I've gone to SSD in all of my modern stuff already. I think it will be a while before SSD is competitive with >4TB drives from a cost standpoint but I do think it will happen sooner or later.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 05:13:13 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 04:21:39 pmHoarding is a big problem, but it's in my nature. The photos only amount to maybe 50GB and some of those are duplicates. The films are a big one, plus I have the BBC Complete Works of Shakespeare on DVDs to put on HDD. Then there are the archives of systems long gone I'll probably never want again, (but you never know) which still exist on my HDD.This system has a 256GB SSD and a 3TB HDD. The SSD has plenty of spare space on it, but the HDD is getting rather cramped. Sorting out this mess might be good for the soul, but it seems easier to just buy more storage. A beautiful 4TB SSD for £350 or a dated, clunky HDD for <£100. Penny pinching (you're a Ferengi and you know about this) is another weakness, and if I have to cross that bridge, I'll probably cheap out.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 05:49:07 pm
content: Fair points. Another perspective is worth considering. Having dealt with a deceased parent leaving me with a full 4TB NAS, it’s in everyone’s interest to keep it trimmed. I curate my data religiously at this point.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 05:52:05 pm
content: I don't care what happens to my data after I'm gone. Most of my bulk storage is movies and music, that isn't too hard to sort through and it's all on a few 8TB disks on a separate machine. My daily driver laptop has only 1TB and that's enough for all the important stuff.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 06:29:29 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 04:21:39 pmJust my oscilloscopes directory, without general Tektronix and HP data, is 254GB.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 07:13:25 pm
content: Yeah. This part of the discussion about needed storage space very much sounds like some "ought to be enough for anybody" mantra.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 07:19:22 pm
content: Speed and convenience against money, with other considerations thrown in such as reliability and data retention. I think it will be a time before I get rid of my 3 and 4TB USB external drives for backup. The 1TB USB2 external drive is a bit of an embarrassment, but it has backups of the thin clients I was into playing with a couple of years back.A lot of discussions on this site boil down to money. If no one was allowed to comment unless they had a personal fortune of $500 million, it would be very boring. "My 8640B has died, the display is playing up, what should I do"? "Either throw it away, or get your chaps to sort it out. They should be able to find one in as new condition for $5,000, and if you are seriously interested in RF sig gens, $30,000 should snag you something better than that in every way. Why are you wasting our time with silly questions?"

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 07:40:20 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 19, 2022, 06:29:29 pmThis is hoarding.Note the NHS article on it. It now includes datahttps://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/hoarding-disorder/

author: eugene
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 07:51:05 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on July 19, 2022, 07:13:25 pmIt would take almost 9000 340kB floppies to store a full length movie in HD. That's 100 disks per minute of video.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 07:59:38 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 07:40:20 pmWhat's wrong with hoarding? Hard disks are dirt cheap and they don't take up much space. Imagine how much history would simply be lost if nobody had the sense to save a hoard of it? I've been saved numerous times by someone who had saved a copy of some obscure old data somewhere. When I think of hoarding, I envision people saving mountains of empty pizza boxes, expired food, or broken deteriorating stuff that they never do anything with yet steadfastly refuse to part with even if there is somebody else who wants to use it or it is objectively trash with no useful value.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 09:01:45 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 19, 2022, 07:59:38 pmData is one thing, it doesn't take much space. 1960s oscilloscopes and their plugins and plugins for the mainframes you mean to acquire are quite another. I must have about 20. Then there are the boatanchors, which currently run to about fifteen.I confess I have a serious junk problem, which can only be solved by buying a bigger house.In my defence, my grandfather and mother were notorious harbourers of junk/rubbish, so it's obviously genetic and their fault for giving me these genes.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 09:04:01 pm
content: Yeah there as well. Some days it all annoys me. Particularly as I'm in the middle of moving house at the moment.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2022, 10:25:52 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 19, 2022, 09:01:45 pmBut that's cool stuff, not everyone's cup of tea, but there are plenty of people out there that would appreciate it, and as long as it's stored such that it is protected from deterioration and your house is still livable and sanitary I don't really see the problem. It's different than hoarding piles of newspaper, rotting food, or scores of cats or dogs. The hoarders that bother me the most are the ones that have a whole bunch of good stuff they aren't taking care of and refuse to part with. I've seen multiple cases where some guy had a barn full of nice vintage radios or arcade games or other collectible things just rotting into trash as the building deteriorated. It's such a shame, personally I'd much rather give something to somebody who can enjoy it than just let it rot.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2022, 05:54:06 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 11:41:43 amI hope the four SSDs are in RAID1 or at least 1+0, thenWhen SSDs go, they go all out, not a single bit is left.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2022, 07:12:48 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 09:44:45 amAnd that's fine for a small recorder. Once you scale it up a bit the argument for SSD is still a harder sell.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2022, 01:13:44 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 07:40:20 pmdo you consider archives in muzeum as hoarding? Saving movies from decades ago to watch again later as hoarding? If yes, then we are fine as hoarder, because government the brilliant minds did it too. But if no, then we are not hoardingfor me hoarding is when you keep multiples of the same item (usually non functional) for no particular useful reason other than interest. Sometime we keep few as 'spare' or 'backup', not simply hoarding. And TBytes data inside a disk compartment is not the same as whats piling at the back of you house requiring more and more space.

author: mnementh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2022, 09:06:14 pm
content: https://xkcd.com/1360/mnem"ahem."

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2022, 09:17:07 pm
content: This is how real men do it.Code:stuff.txtmore.jpgoldstuff.zip+--stuff.mp3+--other.cpp+--oldstuff.zip+--stuff.doc+--morestuff.pdf+--oldstuff.zip+--stuff.mp4+--...+--oldstuff.zip+--...+--oldstuff.zip+--...

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 20, 2022, 09:33:32 pm
content: In the mean time hdd manufacturers have invested in smaller read write head technology and they continue producing larger capacity cmr hdd's also for datacenters.My new NAS needs about 40+TB of storage to hold my media so I will also buy some probably 16TBs.Then I also need the old NAS to backup this 40TB so I have to buy 7x16TB hdds = 112TB costing aprox €2200.-If I would opt for all SSD's also datacenter class it would set me back aprox. €50000.-You guys were saying.....https://tweakers.net/nieuws/199168/western-digital-begint-met-leveren-van-nieuwe-22tb-hdds.html

author: mnementh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2022, 01:32:24 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on July 19, 2022, 07:40:20 pmI have 25 years of eMails on HotMail. A couple times a year I delete all the most prolific advert eMails to keep below the limit; I can't be arsed to actually seek out all the personal mail I actually give a fuck about and make a local copy. Yes, some of those 25-year-old eMails are still important; when I'm feeling nostalgic for friends & family no longer with us, I'll review those footprints left by the ghost in the machine.To me it's no different than the proverbial footlocker full of old photographs & keepsakes.mnem"Photographs and memories;Christmas cards you sent to meAll that I have are these,To remember you..."

author: david77
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2022, 02:24:36 pm
content: As many other have stated, I expect the mechanical HDD for storage applictions will be around for some time but for my system drives I wouldn't part with SSD drives, only over my cold dead body.As it happens I'm in the process of replacing my current (20+ yeas old) home server at the moment. This time I'll put the Linux system on a SSD but the bulk storage will be on 2x 2TB WD HDD again.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2022, 05:41:59 pm
content: Quote from: david77 on July 21, 2022, 02:24:36 pmLike I said, I had problems with page, temporary, and work files wearing through SSD endurance too quickly. The systems I have use something like a 4 drive hardware RAID for their boot, temporary, and work volumes, which in practical tests provides comparable performance to an SSD, and gives the benefit of bulk storage and redundancy.I may use an SSD for setting up a system or reconfiguring it, or if the workload is not going to result in excessive usage and redundancy is not required.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2022, 06:55:23 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 21, 2022, 05:41:59 pmI use SSDs with a couple of Linux systems - I don't use MS. A few years back limiting writes and over-provisioning was a big thing, you don't hear so much of it these days, but there are a few things worth doing. One is limiting the amount that Firefox writes to disk to recover your current tabs, if you like the feature, it doesn't have to be done every 15 seconds. Another is the updates don't have to be checked every fifteen minutes. Another is that you don't want a system with heavy memory pressure swapping to an SSD. Enough RAM avoids some of this, and you may be able to put temporary files on a ramdisk.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 21, 2022, 09:16:18 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 21, 2022, 06:55:23 pmOn the system where I could do it, I added as much RAM as I could. On my new workstation where I first noticed the problem, I moved my work volume to the RAID. Before that I went through 9% of the SSD endurance in 1 month. Now I go through 4% in maybe 6 months, but I could improve that; it has taken this long to get a meaningful measurement.I have been using Crucial B500, M500, and P5 drives so 3D-TLC with an endurance of 350 to 600 (1) depending on model and size, but arguably sufficient for the cost. MLC drives have 5 to 10 times better endurance but are hard to find, older, and cost a lot more. QLC is worse by 3.The Intel S4510 is an oddball 3D-TLC with 10 times the specified endurance of other 3D TLC drives, so I am not sure what is going on with that.(1) Ratio of endurance to capacity, so 350 to 600 GB per GB.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2022, 04:42:51 am
content: i'm not sure whats the endurance figure is that about? but you people seem to worry too much about ssd endurance? i have ssd (os) that work for years with everyday browsers do the caching things, mere 8GB RAM etc. once i've backup my windows installation into hdd using backup tool, i dont have to worry anymore. if ssd fails, i'll buy another ssd and restore the backup, but so far i've not encounter such situation.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2022, 09:26:50 am
content: For most people SSD endurance doesn't matter. Even a cheap SSD, without DRAM cache and with QLC, is going to become obsolete and there'll be cheaper, better replacements, long before the TBW limit is reached. How much use is a 64GB SSD these days? Some of this is a hangover from the days when SSDs were small and expensive.For some situations and some applications, it does matter.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 23, 2022, 02:06:38 am
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 22, 2022, 09:26:50 amExactly, I have an old 160 GB Intel X25-M SSD in one of my machines with over 40 TB written. According to Intel's own data, this equates to only 7% wear. That SSD is approaching 14 years old now and was used in an everyday desktop PC (now I only use it from time to time when I need to run legacy software). There is plenty of life left in these old SSDs, unless you are an extremely heavy user that's constantly writing a lot of data to them.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 23, 2022, 07:44:46 am
content: I have got a 480GB Samsung DC SSD now for over eight years used for downloading and parring and unrarring usenet files.I can not read the TBW since it is a pro drive but my estimate would be around a thousand TB.The thing still works, data I write to it is compared 100% with the original with bcompare AFAICT BUT it toggles bits sometimes. So it is now completely unreliable.I see this during the parring phase, it completes the build then tries to unrar and poof fails. Running the par sw again it reveals suddenly again damaged blocks. Really weird but replacing the ssd witha new one it was fixed.So becarefull with old highly used ssd's. It is not always obvious they are dying and it would wreck havoc on your binaries.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2022, 10:56:15 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on July 18, 2022, 10:51:20 pmExcept that the CRT to LCD transitionwasn’tall that quick. It happened over the course of about 20 years. Much like SSDs, it happened first in portable computers, then high end desktops, then mainstream. It took a long time for LCDs to become a) good enough and b) cheap enough to displace CRTs.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2022, 02:53:26 pm
content: CRT to LCD was a quick change for me. much much earlier than the ssd existence in our market... weight and size of CRT was the big issue, price iirc was comparable so it was a no brainer for me, except in the beginning, my biggest issue with LCD was with a slight change of viewing angle, the color can change visually, i am sensitive to this (beside dead pixels) as photo editing is my trade, but those issues are long gone with latest LCD tech.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2022, 03:36:59 pm
content: It's hard to say how long these transitions take. I'm sure I saw the first LCD displays on laptops in the early 80s. Around 1990 I saw a colour LCD screen on a LAN analyser. Subjectively, for the mainstream, they came in in the late 90s, but I never thought they were worth buying. As I recall transition to the point where LCD displays really were worth having and CRT displays disappeared, was around 2006.Apparently SSDs have been around since 1991. They were probably very expensive and only suited to a few niche markets. Just as a casual recollection, the mainstream computer suppliers started to stock SSDs about 12 years ago.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2022, 08:24:59 pm
content: i don't see spinning rust disappear any time soon.last time i went on vacation my laptop needed a spinning drive.. (two actually) simply to keep a backup of the memory cards in my cameras.i uses 256G memory cards to shoot video and pictures. they fill up fast . making a backup is necessary. a 4 terabyte ssd is very expensive. a 5 terabyte usb hdd is 50$ ...

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 04:15:18 am
content: if i dont be careful with selfie videos, things can get out of hand in a matter of days. that earlier meme will apply pretty quickly.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 05:04:50 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 25, 2022, 02:53:26 pmThe switch to SSDs came much later ineverymarket.Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 25, 2022, 02:53:26 pmThere was only a short period of time where the prices were comparable: for the longest time, CRTs weresignificantlycheaper. For any given size of display, once LCDs became comparable in cost and image quality, CRTs vanished fairly quickly. This happened progressively across display sizes, because the biggest LCDs have always been disproportionately expensive compared to smaller ones.But until that very brief period where LCDs and CRTs of a given size coexisted at similar cost, the LCD was invariably significantly more expensive. The first desktop LCD with a modern widescreen resolution was the 1998 Silicon Graphics 1600SW (1600x1024px, 17.3”) at $2500 (over $4500 today). At the time, a top-quality 17” (4:3) CRT cost $500, and a top-quality 21” CRT could be had for $1300. The same $1300 also got you a 15” 1024x768 LCD that was inferior to the 17” CRT in every way possible other than thickness and weight.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 05:41:06 pm
content: Still some gamers still prefer a HD Sony trinitron above any flatscreen.Prices of those sky rocketed out of proportion.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 05:48:59 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on July 26, 2022, 05:41:06 pmI still have one of those, it's a great monitor but I replaced it in regular use with a LCD years ago. Maybe I should try to sell it again since it's just taking up space, it would be a nightmare to try to ship it anywhere though.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 06:07:30 pm
content: I bought a secondhand IIyama 21" CRT monitor in 2004. I didn't rate any of the remotely affordable LCD monitors then. When it died a couple of years later, the market had changed and there may not have been any CRT monitors around. It certainly made sense to buy an LCD monitor then. I don't recall CRT monitors even survived in niche markets much.Those old 21" CRT monitors were huge, and took a lot of desk space.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 07:18:21 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 26, 2022, 06:07:30 pmi think i switched during this time as well but i dont think i've ever spent more than $600 on 24"++ LCD...Quote from: tooki on July 26, 2022, 05:04:50 pmso thats probably a 6 years timespan into the demise of CRT. i didnt quickly made the upgrade since i was satisfied with my 17 (or 19?) inch CRT, until it started playing up. my first ssd is like 10 years ago, price gap maybe closing in but data retention for ssd storage/backup purpose is still questionable, 1 year retention is quite a pathetic figure.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 07:24:21 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 26, 2022, 06:07:30 pmAt the first computer store I ever worked at (in early 1999), my boss had the 24" Sony widescreen CRT (GDM-FW900). Now THAT was a beast! But honestly, while the color quality of those Trinitrons is great, the edge-to-edge sharpness and geometry struggled with that aspect ratio in the flat-CRT construction. The short neck doesn't help (but was necessary to make it fit on a halfway ordinary desk).

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 07:27:42 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 26, 2022, 06:07:30 pmAnd heavy ! i had a nokia 445X that thing could run 1600x1200https://www.ebay.com/itm/125353103895?hash=item1d2fa09217:g:qswAAOSwt1Rim~7Ui used a number-nine systems video card GX64 pro. with the 4Meg VRAM. i could run Windows 3.1 in 1600x1200 and autotrax using the VESA driver at high resolution. that was great for PCB design. everyone else was cramped at 640x480 or 800x600 ...

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 07:34:29 pm
content: and very difficult to carry around on its center of gravity, thats why my transition was quick, i was afraid to lose a backbone.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 07:37:40 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 26, 2022, 07:18:21 pmYeah. I mean, 2002 is when Apple switched the iMac to LCD, but they were on the early side. 2005 is when I got my first desktop LCD, a Dell 2405FPW, a lovely 24" LCD (which I still own and occasionally use as an extra display) that was exceptionally well-priced for the time.I know Apple introduced its first (optional) SSD in 2008, in the original MacBook Air, because I was working for Apple at the time and actually staffed the Apple booth at the Macworld Expo where the Air was introduced.IIRC it cost $1000 extra to upgrade the 120GB HDD to the 64GB SSD when custom ordering. Very, very nice product at the time. (Incidentally, the original MB Air used a 1.8" hard disk, like the iPods, because even the thinnest 2.5" HDDs were too big!) Just two and a half years later, SSD became standard in the MacBook Air.My first SSD was a 256GB upgrade installed into my MacBook to replace the hard disk, followed shortly by a 512GB one installed into my Mac Pro (tower). The only hard disks I've bought since then are multi-terabyte units strictly for backups.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 07:40:45 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 26, 2022, 07:34:29 pmYep! When I worked as a computer tech full-time in 1999 and 2001/02 (and sporadically through 2008), most of my clients were in the graphic arts, so many had 21" CRTs. Whenever possible we'd move those with two people.Any time you carry a CRT on your own, though, it's imperative to have the screen facing you, so you can lean it onto your chest for stability. Makes it far easier to carry than any other orientation.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 08:21:06 pm
content: When the first flat screens came out in the 90s the thinness advantage was obvious, but pundits predicted CRTs would be around for a long time because of the fully capitalized manufacturing base and the associated economies of scale. But as sales volume for LCDs grew that economy of scale equation started tipping. Things like shipping cost and warehousing volume requirements started really hurting CRTs. All the same kind of things are in play with SSDs. The speed advantage in desktop and laptop applications is obvious. Prices are converging. If you strongly prefer spinning rust, buy it soon. A decade from now (and maybe much sooner) it will be like analog oscilloscopes, a fond memory and a collectors item.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 11:48:16 pm
content: I have no particular attachment to "spinning rust", what I do like is rock bottom cost per TB and large multi-TB drives. When the cost per TB for SSD drops below that of mechanical drives, I'll switch to SSD for my bulk storage and backup needs.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2022, 11:54:06 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 26, 2022, 11:48:16 pmWhich is again going to take a... while.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 12:06:20 am
content: well like others said, magnetic tapes still exist, even if its only for niche market, i believe we still can get them if we need to...

author: nightfire
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 01:45:46 am
content: My take on that, as a sysadmin in a small privately owned company:For normal computers, there is usually no reason NOT to have an SSD as a boot drive and for ordinary operations.Especially recent notebook systems also profit from lower latencies of the M.2 PCIe based SSDs over SATA systems.But in the Server section it is different. Here, especially for backup, HDDs still have a very valid place, due to:- price per GB- robustness in a power-off stateEven if a HDD would not spin up after a few years of non-powered storage, some data reconstruction lab like ontrak should be able to get to the data, with the flash chips of a SSD i am not hat sure.Also some big storage systems alleviate the disadvantages of HDDs with big controllers and caches, so available tech can still be used in a good manner, as long as the admins know their limits.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 04:30:02 am
content: I agree. Right now lowest cost for large capacities come in disk drives. And arguably reliability is higher. But those who keep pointing this out are much like those who pointed out correctly that 24 inch CRTs were superior to the 14 inch and 17 inch LCD monitors which were the first affordable flat screens. The comparably sized LCD screens were at first just not available and then higher cost. But the time it took to flip those statistics was stunningly short. I thought at the time it would be a decade. It was more like two years.I suspect many will be surprised by how fast SSD takes over. I am not ready to predict two years, but I wouldn't put money down against it. And I would put money on it being less than a decade. Once it happens those who want hard drives for whatever reason will be like the current folks who want Trinitron monitors. Their reasons might well be valid, but they are searching in specialty markets and paying very high prices.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 05:24:24 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 25, 2022, 08:24:59 pmWhere did you get that good deal? PC Part Picker lists $95 for the cheapest 6TB drive. (There are no cheap 5TB drives listed.)

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 06:05:44 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 26, 2022, 11:48:16 pmAs you could have read in other topics you do realize that the ssd needs to be powered on regularly in order to guarantee data integrity ?So IMO not really suitable for long time storage as backup medium.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 07:27:47 am
content: The best backup strategy is to backup often and keep data "moving". That means testing relatively frequently, re-writing old volumes, and migrating from media that is getting old.You shouldn't back up your old files once and hope that they are still readable in 10 years time if you need to rely on the backup. With tape backup, you erases and re-wrote tapes quite regularly.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 07:41:55 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 27, 2022, 12:06:20 amAt one time tape around the early 90s, magnetic tape became an option in the consumer market, but HDD sizes rapidly overtook the capacity of affordable tape backup. It exists now as a professional backup medium where it has several advantages, such as being suitable for offsite storage, where it's hard to see HDDs or SSDs displacing it. For most of us, USB external HDDs are a very practical means of backup. I don't see that changing quickly.In some niche markets such as telecomms, 1/2" tape survived years after it had died out everywhere else. They really couldn't cope with rapid change, and they were prepared to pay to have new 1/2" tape drives made in small volumes.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 07:56:30 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on July 27, 2022, 07:27:47 amYes, there'd be a procedure of full backups, with partial backups in between, and there'd possibly be offsite storage as part of it. There'd almost certainly be a fireproof safe for the tapes. Most of the tapes would be reused fairly often. You might even be doing striped backups across more than one tape drive. All of this would need thought through procedures which were followed. It would depend on the data loss risk you were guarding against. For most of us, if the house burned down we'd have other worries than whether we had an off-site backup of our computer files, but a company would have to be able to cope with a fire.Another risk was having a write-only tape drive.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 03:30:41 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 27, 2022, 05:24:24 amWestern digital 5Tb USB enclosure. they come in yellow/red/orange/blue/black enclosures. They were 50$ on an amazon deal a couple of years ago when WD changed the cases to new style. I got one in every color. There is no adapter/converter inside ! so it is not a SATa with a sata<>usb bridge. The drive board has a usb connector. They are slow (5400rpm) but perfect for backup of photo/video footage.I take video underwater and a 128Gig microsd fills quickly when you shoot in 4k. Came back from last vacation with 3+TB footage. a 4TB ssd costs an arm and a leg...

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 03:38:11 pm
content: for backup- one copy is no copy- two copies is half a copy- three copies is still not a backupHave two copies (besides the original) on different machines , preferably in different locations. It's not just the storage medium , it's also how to access the medium. I have it on tape ... anyone has a 9600bpi drive ? you think i am joking ? i have it backed up on (re)writable cd/dvd ... how many computers still have an optical drive ? i have it on usb stick... where the is that damn adapter to go from old usb to usb-c.I have it on a nas... what if the motherboard in the nas dies ? are you sure that nas with that firmware will still be around ? are you certain you can access that drive from a regular computer ? oh, but it is using ext-3 (or whatever filesystem) ... yeah , in just a "slightly" modified version... and if they encrypted the drive and the motherboard died .. kiss the encryption key goodbye as it was stored in the TPM of that motherboard.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 04:05:00 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2022, 03:38:11 pmat least there are 3 here..

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 05:03:04 pm
content: Having an optical drive is only half the answer. I was recently going through backups, recovering photographs from the early 2000s stored on DVD+R disks. Reads were slow and about half of the DVDs were partially or totally unreadable. I was about to write them off to corrosion or one of the other failure mechanisms these media have but on a lark decided to spend $35 on a new SATA optical drive. Suddenly all the data was accessible. At least long enough to move it to a more current media. It turns out that both of the DVD readers in the machine dedicated to this purpose had degraded.I have kept a variety of storage devices, just in case. I have several flavors of 5.25 inch floppies, a couple of 3.5 inch floppies, a couple of ZIP drives and a stack other things. But if I was really serious about being able to use them I would have to perform active maintenance. I don't care that much about data that old.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 05:10:57 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on July 27, 2022, 06:05:44 amIn my case my largest backup needs are not long term cold storage, the backup drives are powered up regularly and the backup is updated. I have not personally had any issues with data loss due to SSDs not being powered for extended periods but I suppose it's something to consider if I were going to archive something and not touch it for a long time.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 05:39:43 pm
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on July 27, 2022, 05:03:04 pmI assume the problem with your old optical drives is degradation of the laser--how old were they?

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 05:54:35 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 27, 2022, 04:05:00 pmyes, old ones you bought 5 year ago. Go to a store and try to find a laptop with an optical drive. If you need a mac : good luck ..As for dvd drives : if you never use them the lenses collect dust and a kind of haze develops over it. most lenses are polycarbonate.I ditched all that stuff. floppies, optical disks , usb sticks...Two nas boxes that mirror each other , in different geographical locations, unencrypted drives , standard EXT-2 format , clone in the nas + clone between nas) and an encrypted backup subset stored at a cloud provider.cloning is not automatic. we don't want a good file to be overwritten by a corrupted newer version of the file. I use a tool called ViceVersa and keep multiple versions (similar to apple timemachine. Viceversa has very fine control of the archiving options).Verified i can pull a drive, hook it to a computer esata (or usb<>sata) port and access it without problems. No jbod or raid , that too is nothing but trouble in case of a disaster. Often you need the exact raid controller to be able to rebuild. Fat good that stack of drives does you if the disk structure is unreadable due to controller differences.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 06:15:28 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2022, 05:54:35 pmThe drives aren't built in anymore but they're still around and they are readily available. My laptop doesn't have a built in optical drive but an external one was one of the first accessories I bought for it. You may not use them but they are still widely used, most people I know own at least one. I use mine regularly, and I use USB keys often.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 06:28:23 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on July 27, 2022, 07:27:47 amI agree with that. The best long-term strategy for data retention is... replication. (I know I already said that, but that's incidentally how life works.)Which is a more workable scheme if the storage media are cheap.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 06:34:38 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2022, 05:54:35 pmGood luck finding a Windows laptop with an optical drive, either. It doesn’t matter though: whether Mac, Windows, or Linux, just get a $40 external DVD-RW drive that plugs in with USB.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 06:54:01 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2022, 05:54:35 pmwrong! 10+ years ago.Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2022, 05:54:35 pmlaptop (for work) is only for new kids on the block. they are only for presentation (connecting to projector) or if i have to go outstation for weeks or months.Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2022, 05:54:35 pmthats why the 3 machines i disconnect the power and sata cables to save the laser diode's useful life. only to connect them when i have cd/dvd to read/write. i have more damaged dvd drive that i learnt the fact the hardway from. the reason i keep and try to save them as long as i can is because i still have bunches of cd/dvd around, and full boxes of empty dvdr.Quote from: james_s on July 27, 2022, 06:15:28 pmditto.. i have one for the wifey's laptop. i dont use it anymore as we can transfer data or install OS from USB stick nowadays.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 07:03:34 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on July 27, 2022, 06:34:38 pmone more thing to carry, can't find when needed , broken when needed ... and how much longer will that be around ? who still buys recordable disks ? the storage capacity is too small these days. blu ray writer, maybe ..But the quality of the optical media has gone to snot... i have Startrax CD . double speed, written on an original Kodak CD writer (external ,big machine on a SCIS card ) size of a VCR . They are still perfectly readable. They are the solid gold disks (no organic layer )The stuff they sell now ? leave it on your desk in the sun for a week and it's a coaster ...

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2022, 07:18:23 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 27, 2022, 06:54:01 pmi don't have desktops anymore. I Buy used z-books. True mobile workstations. Shove em in a dock and done. if i need to relocate : grab the machine and go.Quotei have not loaded a cd or dvd or bluray in at least 5 years. i tossed them all out . movies are streaming only ( i don't really buy movies. stream when it is included in prime or netflix. i only own a few like the back to the future trilogy ). Software is download only these days and has been for a long time. the rest are old files that i moved off optical and into the nas.I have not seen an optical disk in years. I keep a few like OS installation disks if needed for some test equipment like logic analysers. once the OS is running on those : network and pull the rest off the nas. i don;t have any machines that cannot network. i have one older scope that uses a floppy drive but i never save there anyway.usb keys ... i've lost so many , stepped on em , crushed them ... They are always crappy construction. The little eyelets break. They seem to be designed in such a way that you will lose them. I had one that was shaped like a steel house key. Put on your keyring . Worked great ! . Till one day it stopped working .. nothing .. i look in the connector end : the guts had fallen out. the usb drive was a plastic block that was inserted through the usb opening. only the outer shell was there. contacts , circuit board and chips were gone..drop the file(s) on a shared public thing like dropbox or google drive and move on. Not only that but usb sticks these days can be infected with bootloaders and other nasties , or be fake and designed to fry the computer.At least iwth shared folders you can write-protect those.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 06:38:11 am
content: I saved all sw installers in ext hdd so i can do complete os+sw's installation offline independent of anything.. and because i maintain few pc's, even friends' that ask for help. if you like me you'll know online sw installation is a hassle esp if many of them. And i dont use any usb key, never! i use patch.exe

author: Haenk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 08:07:36 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on July 27, 2022, 05:03:04 pmUnlikely.However the venting fans of the case often pull (unfiltered) air through the drives, leaving dust and whatever on the lenses, leading to the mentioned read errors.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 08:35:10 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2022, 07:18:23 pmDuring my stint as a computer technician, I learned something about users: they tend to fall into one of two groups, those who are really gentle on their gadgets, and those who are really hard on them. Sounds to me like you fall more into the latter group!(I’m more in the first group, and I’ve never had a flash drive get lost, fail or break.)Also, this is part of why broadcast video gear is so expensive: it’s all built to handle the latter group’s style of handling without failing. :p

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 08:40:09 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 27, 2022, 07:03:34 pmGiven that USB floppy drives are still available, LONG after becoming obsolete, I expect that USB optical drives will be available for quite some time yet. It’s likely that they’ll stop making DVD drives (much the way we don’t make CD-only data drives any more), so probably they’ll just be $50 blu-ray drives with DVD and CD backward-compatibility.I prefer the external drives: why schlep an internal drive with me everywhere for the 1 time in two years I might need it? It’s added weight, and would represent the only mechanical component in the machine other than the CPU fan.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 08:44:19 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 27, 2022, 06:54:01 pmThat makes literally no sense. The laser isn’t sitting there turned on all day long: it turns on when closing the drive tray triggers it to check for a disc. And in fact, it’s not one laser: in a DVD drive, there is one IR laser for reading/burning CDs, and a red one for DVDs. (In a blu-ray drive, there’s a third blue laser.) Only one laser is ever on at one time, and it’s off when idle.As haenk said, a far more likely explanation for drive degradation is dust ingestion, which is not related to whether it’s powered up. An external drive won’t suffer that problem.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 02:44:10 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on July 28, 2022, 08:40:09 amwhen's the last time you actually used an optical disc ? a dvd can hold barely 5Gbyte. a CD 0.6. That tiny micro-sd card can hold 50x more. ( or even much more these days)I think the optical drives will disappear soon. (apart from blu-ray players maybe)The recordable cd / dvd is a medium without use in computers"- A modern Os installer doesn't even fit on a DVD anymore- writing is slow, even with fast drives- easily damaged- degrades in sunlight (you can't leave it on your desk)- large- little storage space for what it is- risk of making coasters.in the year 2000 you could walk into a compusa and there were whole rows of shelves with 50 or more different writers and drives. now ? go to a computer store and they have .. one modelI bought the HP-100 dvd-rw drive when it first came out and had the free upgrade to the 200 model when they discovered it could not be upgraded to do +rwThe only reason i keep one around (not even a blu-ray , just a simple cd/dvd writer) is so i can burn recovery images for some test equipment that does not have usb ports. and it sits in a n old computer running windows xp that drives dome other archaic stuff.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 02:47:56 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on July 28, 2022, 08:35:10 ami'm typically in the middle. a usb stick is hanging of my keychain with my carkeysreasons i've lost some- the little cord snaps- the key case is made from plastic and the attachment point for the cord is very weak (i'm looking at you HP and PNY and Lexar...)- the entire drive falls out of the swivel coverespecially this kind of drive :- many of the "key" style drives have the usb contacts exposed. i've had two die , probably because of ESD. i've had one fry a usb port because it made a big short when inserted. the computer actually rebooted.these :- i had a kingston Datatraveler. last time i neede it the guts were left behind in the last machine i plugged it in. all that was remaining was the empty shell ...- and lets not forget the style where the cord attaches to .. the cap... so all that remains is the cap dangling from the keychain... the drive is gone.other irritations:- you lose the little endcap- it has a usb-c when you need a usb-b or micro usb (for phone) or lightning and vice versa (no i don not want to carry an adapter. it's another thing to lose)- some are wider than a usb to usb spacing so they interfere with adjacent ports.i now use the samsung "bar" style. those have a solid metal construction with an eyelet that will not break and you can put an actual metal split ring through it so the damn thing stays put on my keychain. so far the guts have not fallen out.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 03:21:22 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on July 28, 2022, 08:44:19 amthe drive is cranking every boot time remember?Quote from: tooki on July 28, 2022, 08:44:19 amas i said i have more broken dvd drive here. when tried to repair, no dust inside, they turned on as usual, but cannot read any data. if its just a matter of dust or hazy glass, i should be able to fix them easily. my guess is those drives they sell are consumer grade and they doom to fail within 5 years of usage (turned on with PC even 99% idle)

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 05:23:11 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 28, 2022, 02:44:10 pmA few days ago, I backed up some of my project files on a CD. I burn CDs to play in one of my cars that has a CD player, modern head units look silly in 40+ year old cars. I make boot CDs to install Linux distros and as rescue discs. A huge majority of my hardware and software projects (KiCAD, FPGA, Python, C) can fit on a CD, a single DVD can back up almost all of the critical stuff I care about and I end up with multiple copies archived. The really big stuff like my media collection gets backed up on hard drives but most of that is replaceable. Optical drives will go away eventually but lots of people still use them, even if you don't.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 05:36:34 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 28, 2022, 05:23:11 pmThere's a lot of material available on optical discs, films and music. Some of it's very cheap second hand. If you have a PC you use for entertainment, a DVD drive is pretty much essential.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 05:44:49 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 28, 2022, 02:44:10 pmcd/dvdr data retention is 20-30 years (100 years life expectancy), hdd is 5-10 years, ssd is 0.25-1 year atm... if dvdr drive is gone, that archival capability will be missed. currently double layer dvdr is 8.5GB the last time i checked. btw archiving job is not for the "latter" type of guy who toss around their dvds or put them under the sun.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 05:45:28 pm
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 28, 2022, 05:36:34 pmI still typically buy music on CDs, then I immediately rip them onto my streaming server and pack the original CD away. I like having a physical copy of the media I buy.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 06:11:37 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 28, 2022, 02:44:10 pmIt’s been years since Iwrotea data disc — but then again, I almost never did that even back in the day. (Back then, Mac users were much more likely than PC users to use external hard disks, thanks to high-speed external interfaces, namely SCSI and then FireWire. So I rarely had the need to burn any data but things like a copy of an OS installer disc.) Most of the discs I’ve burned over the years were audio CD “mixtapes” for the car.On the other hand, I still buy music mostly on CD (which paradoxically is often cheaper than downloads) and rip it. I also used to do that with DVDs, though I never bothered getting a Blu-ray drive.Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 28, 2022, 03:21:22 pmWhich is literally 2 seconds maximum. Even cumulatively, it simply does not matter. Even if a computer did that 10 times a day for 10 years, that’s 10 hours of use, so the same as watching a half dozen feature films (a common use for a DVD drive). Completely negligible.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 06:58:43 pm
content: thats the "theory"

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 07:49:43 pm
content: hmm. i guess i'm weird.I didn't realize people still even bought media on disks. the little music i buy is from apple. maybe one or two songs a year. i'm not big on music or films. I bought maybe 20 movies on "disc" in my lifetime. now it's on amazon. and even that is like 5 movies a year. If i can't stream it i don't want to watch it. And i'm not subscribing to 25 streaming services. Between netflix , amazon and cbs , that's it. No disney, apple tv or anything else. i hate blu-ray. i've bought at least 4 players, that invariable became unsupported, needed endless updates to play a disc i had just bought. There is nothing more frustrating and mood-killing than coming home, planning a nice movie night and then first need to muck around for 3 hours jumping through hoops to update the player firmware because "it's not compatible with the new disc" you just brought home.As for burning stuff to cd/dvd .. i store copies on a distributed NAS accessible from all machines in the house. It has plenty of storage and can hold 4 drives. if i run out : time to upgrade one of the drives. last time that happened was 2.5 years ago. i still have a slot free and i know the nas supports up to 16Tb drives per slot. (4 slots) i'm not going to run out. Currently loaded with 4TB drives so plenty of room to grow.i also make it a point not to store anything on the local machines (except when traveling, but my laptop has two physical drives and i carry a USB harddisk for another copy as well) . my files reside on the nas , quadruplicated (two copies per nas and copies between nas) and versioned (like apple time machine). critical stuff has a cloud backup as well.like i said , i keep one cd/dvd burner around so i can write a recovery disc for test equipment like infiniium scopes , logic analysers etc. those can install from cd. i wonder if anyone has ever made a box that converts a usb memory stick to ide ... or can emulate a cd player... like those floppy emulators with usb... gotta look for that...i'm weird like that...

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 09:37:20 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on July 28, 2022, 06:58:43 pmThe math adds up, you can try it yourself.What isn’t represented is usage-independent aging, and on the contrary, the advantages of running the motors now and then so they don’t seize up.

author: Zenith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 09:39:01 pm
content: Not weird, just different. I have a large collection of CDs played through a CD player - you can still buy them new. I'm not much into new trends in hifi, streaming services and all the rest of it. I suppose I could investigate a proper computer based hifi system and commit all the CDs to disc, but it hardly seems worth the trouble.I like old films and TV series. I've been given a few boxed sets and picked up another lot through ebay or looking through charity shops (thrift stores), or picked them up at car boot sales. I particularly like black and white films. I haven't had a TV for 25 years. When I see TV at friends' places all I see is irritating rubbish. Apparently that's considered weird.As for data storage and computer use, I don't use optical media much for that these days, but a few times over the last five years, I've been glad I've had a PC with a DVD drive.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 28, 2022, 10:42:39 pm
content: Leaving the drive powered, or for only reading, will have no affect on the laser diode operating life.What does matter is optical power during writes because the diodes operate at close to their maximum rating. Since the wear is some power function of the power, operating life, and the number of burned disks, can be considerably extended by only burning at the slowest speed where optical power is lower.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2022, 12:01:31 am
content: Quote from: Zenith on July 28, 2022, 09:39:01 pmI have a pure digital playlist of music. Most of it is not available on cd's except through ebay , used. Pretty hard to find a Joe Dassin cd here in the US ... Or Urbanus (flemisch comedian). But they are on apple music and the rest are digitized from my old CD collection. I still have the discs somewhere in a storage box, but they are converted to apple lossless and stored in itunes.Most of my day to day music is through youtube, custom mixes like Staysee, or indie music like pomplamoose. i got some playlists there , or from the phone , but i prefer quiet when working. Car streams. it doesn't have an old school radio/tape/cd anymore. Only a huge touchscreen and streamingBetween amazon prime and netflix and cbs (for star trek) i got all i need. I ditched the few blu ray discs and dvd's i had and bought them as digital. i'm done with all those crap players with their stupid drm and updates. i got so mad the last time . The player needed 4 updates and then it told me the disc was too new to be able to play. I would have to had buy a new player. For the 5 times a year a play a disc ? I Widlarized the player out of frustration. I Don't take crap like that anymore. I Wanted a nice movie night and ended up with hours of download install and then still couldn't play the disc ( the hobbit). Sony Blu-ray player.

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2022, 12:13:55 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 28, 2022, 10:42:39 pmI didn’t know that! Good tip. Thanks.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2022, 06:36:06 am
content: Quote from: tooki on July 28, 2022, 09:37:20 pm'theory' of simple math adding minutes and hours is not the same as empirical result of whats piling in my store.. you havent take into account current that goes into the laser or candela measurement which i dont claim to know but a probable factors.. as said, the reason i keep them is because i can one day reuse their parts such as motor mechanism etc which are still perfectly fine. In fact all mechanical and physical aspects of them, including laser+motor assembly are visually perfectly fine.. they just dont read for unknown reason.Quote from: Circlotron on July 29, 2022, 12:13:55 amwhich what i usually did on those damaged dvdrw drives because i have the impression slower write give less risk of corrupted data, but then they died quickly anyway..

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2022, 04:00:28 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 28, 2022, 07:49:43 pmThe numbers steadily decreased for years but there was a slight uptick recently and over 46 million CDs are sold each year and that is I believe just the new ones so physical media is still very much alive if overshadowed by newer tech. I have a very old bluray player and I have never encountered even one movie that wouldn't play in it, I don't even know if the firmware can be updated, certainly I have never tried, that is a completely foreign experience to me, I don't even know what would result in that happening. I have hundreds of DVDs, blurays and CDs, and I buy more regularly, almost always used ones that cost peanuts.I tried streaming for a while, I had Netflix and Amazon but I eventually dumped both of them because they kept losing content I wanted to watch so I set up a Plex server and have been running that for several years now. It works just like Netflix except the interface is much nicer and the content is all stuff that I want and never changes unless I change it. It runs on a tiny little i7 mini PC that lives in a closet, I rarely even have to think about it, it just works.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2022, 04:03:27 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 28, 2022, 10:42:39 pmThe laser diodes do wear, but usually when an optical drive has problems it's because the optics in the pickup get dirty. They are not sealed and contaminates in the air find their way in there. Look at all that dust inside an old desktop computer, some of that same dust gets into the optical drive. I've seen them fouled by cooking oil vapor in the air and coolant vapor in my friends machine shop was a constant hassle with optical drives, you don't see it in the air most of the time but it leaves a sticky film all over everything in the shop eventually.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 29, 2022, 05:02:36 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 29, 2022, 04:03:27 pmI learned that negative case pressure draws dust and contaminates into the drives lesson long ago. Since then I have designed all of my systems to operate with positive pressure and an intake filter.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2022, 07:01:22 pm
content: Looks like HDDs are greener than SSDs:The Dirty Carbon Secret Behind Solid State Memory Drives (https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/the-dirty-carbon-secret-behind-solid-state-memory-drives)

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2022, 07:09:41 pm
content: Quote from: madires on August 02, 2022, 07:01:22 pmThat's an interesting take.

author: Kevin.D
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2022, 07:36:46 pm
content: I still use a blue ray optical drive for safe archival of important docs/data/photos etc , I use those M disks (available up to 28 Gig capacity) which are good for 1000 yearsapparently (not sure how they arrived at that figure) but I do know they will certainly outlast standard dvd , hdd or ssd drive archived material.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2022, 09:35:16 pm
content: Quote from: Kevin.D on August 02, 2022, 07:36:46 pmElevated lifetime tests, so extreme temperatures, uv light and humidity and then calculating # errors over time.Then calculating back to the normal storage conditions they can make an statistical estimation.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2022, 10:07:26 pm
content: When I built my new workstation last year, I included M-DISC compatible DVD and Blu-Ray burners, but I have not put them to use yet because I need to upgrade my burner software. When I backup to disk, I use PAR2 files for error recovery.So far I keep an offline backup of critical files on a pair of external USB SATA SSDs which are regularly checked using hashes to force scrubbing.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 03, 2022, 03:22:17 am
content: Quote from: Kevin.D on August 02, 2022, 07:36:46 pmBe really careful with optical media for long-term storage. In a place I used to work, we would have old archives, first on CD, then DVD and eventually Bluray. I experienced problems which ranged from discs being rendered totally unreadable, to certain sectors being unreadable (which is no good for archive files unless there is redundancy built-into the file). And we're talking disks that ranged from 10 to only a few years old.It was a standard office-type set up, but after hours, the air conditioning would shut off. I'm not sure whether that contributed significantly to the humidity and therefore accelerated the damage to the discs or not?The moral of the story is test and rotate your backups often.

author: Zoli
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2022, 03:47:54 am
content: Quote from: Halcyon on August 03, 2022, 03:22:17 amThat's typical for the dye-based disks; however, the M-disks are based on different technology. I would place them in similar category like the mass-produced/printed disks for longevity.Quote from: Halcyon on August 03, 2022, 03:22:17 amThat's absolutely true for all the backup media types.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2022, 12:54:46 am
content: Just for kicks I broke out some old DVDs that that I burned 18 years ago and read them with both drives without problems.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2022, 01:09:22 am
content: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/08/02/1837229/the-dirty-carbon-secret-behind-solid-state-memory-drives

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2022, 05:31:54 am
content: a little bit too duplicated...Quote from: madires on August 02, 2022, 07:01:22 pmdoesnt that mean more trees can breath on co2 and in return produce more o2 for us to breath on, and then we can multiply more until the earth is overcrowded, and then we'll either need to move to mars or kill each other to rebalance the population count.

author: BruceEckel
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 09:20:34 am
content: Clicking sound from a HDD is so called “Click of death” because that means the Hard drive is now broken and must be repaired or replaced.HDD and SSD can and do fail suddenly. I have had a 1TB external drive fail on me like this, it showed no prior signs of damage before it suddenly developed click of death.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 10:16:24 am
content: Lemme fix that for you:Quote from: BruceEckel on September 01, 2022, 09:20:34 amFor all intents and purposes, hard disks cannot be repaired.Quote from: BruceEckel on September 01, 2022, 09:20:34 amFor the sake of data integrity and avoiding failures, I replace them long before they start clicking, by using SMART to identify issues. Not all failures can be predicted, but some SMART parameters (or rapid changes in them) are strong predictors of imminent failure.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 11:37:08 am
content: Quote from: tooki on September 01, 2022, 10:16:24 amit depends, sometime it can...Quote from: tooki on September 01, 2022, 10:16:24 ampower glitch can cause some SMART parm to be marked. and disk clone will clone the SMART parm as well, so a marked SMART value as bad, can be all perfect green again. i set 10 years as limit, or if i start to hear weird sound, i dont usually remember to check SMART values.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 03:49:31 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on September 01, 2022, 10:16:24 amRepair as in you continue using it as a normal hdd no, but to get the data back you can some times.If the error is in the drive controller board you can buy a donor hdd and replace one rom from the original to the donor board and swap them.ExampleSometimes it is as simple as blown resistors/fuse/diode ofcourse you have to ask what caused this but hey if it works for a couple of hours that is enough to get the data off it.ExampleIf it is a mechanical issue inside the drive then you better hire a pro company esp with current helium filled disks.So best advice: back everything up !

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 05:11:43 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on September 01, 2022, 11:37:08 amA band-aid fix to recover data is NOT A REPAIR, and that video even says so.Quote from: Mechatrommer on September 01, 2022, 11:37:08 amNot the ones that matter in regard to predicting failure.Quote from: Mechatrommer on September 01, 2022, 11:37:08 amComplete nonsense.Quote from: Mechatrommer on September 01, 2022, 11:37:08 amCertain test logs have a limited number of entries, such that the oldest tests get cycles out.Not the important stuff though.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 05:17:27 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 01, 2022, 03:49:31 pmI said “for all intents and purposes”, not “under all circumstances without exception”.Data recovery (as a result of a failure to back up properly) is the ONLY situation where any work on a failed or failing hard drive makes sense, and then the purpose is not to restore it regular use. In any situation other than data recovery, the labor cost of a repair attempt will exceed the cost of replacing the drive with a new one.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 05:29:18 pm
content: When I was a broke teenager somebody gave me a pair of dead 1GB hard drives, quite large by the standards of the day. I swapped the PCB from one onto the other and got one of the drives working and used it for several years. I also repaired a 8GB SCSI drive once that had a drink spilled on the computer while it was running, my friend had his whole music collection on it. Replacing one of the mosfets driving the spindle motor fixed it and he was still using it when I lost touch with him a few years later. That latter could be called data recovery, the former was a result of poverty and having more time than money.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 05:32:29 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on September 01, 2022, 05:17:27 pmWell as a non native english speaker I do count "backup of data" as a valid purpose to repair a hdd, other cases indeed it makes no economical sense also regarding reliability etc.But as far as reliability goes, then the same goes for instance any electrical device having suffered severe ESD due to lightning or whatever and debatable also any T&M device that has suffered damaged on its measurements inputs, at least if you need the data to be exact and reliable, unless done properly , recalibrated and certified by the manufacturer.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 05:58:42 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 01, 2022, 05:32:29 pmTo me, as a native English speaker, "repair" has the connotation of adurablerepair intended to return the item to regular service. Otherwise, we'd call it a "temporary repair", temporary fix", etc.(FYI, "backup" specifically means making an extrapreventativecopyin advanceto protect against data loss. Copying data offafterdrive failure isdata recovery, the exact opposite of backing up.)Anything involving anyone but the manufacturer or manufacturer-authorized data recovery provider opening the drive (as in the reply above yours) is, given the fickle nature of HDD mechanisms, inherently a quick-and-dirty fix, not a lasting repair, since letting non-cleanroom air into the drive is asking for trouble.Quote from: Kjelt on September 01, 2022, 05:32:29 pmThat's comparing apples to oranges. Or apples to pencil erasers. Completely irrelevant. We're not talking about drives that have failed due to abuse. The issue is that non-abused hard disks will just... fail. And almost all of the time, it's mechanical failure.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 10:14:12 pm
content: True. They can fail as anything mechanical, electric , pneumatic etc can fail.I don't think harddrives are particular worse if taken care of (used) properly.In datacenters using enterprise grade harddisks that are 24/7 on in temperature and humidity controlled environment 99% if not higher of the harddisks are preventively changed after three or four years without any failure.Personally from the 74 harddisks I ever owned I have one fail and one has a SMART entry which is not good. A lot of these harddisks were never 24/7 on, were moved, shaken, temperature cycles, lots of power on/off cycles etc.You probably know the backblaze reports, they reveal that the AFR of hdds is equal to ssds now who had put their money on that ?https://www.dpreview.com/news/7921185885/backblaze-reveals-failure-rates-for-hard-drives-in-2021-releases-an-ssd-report-for-the-first-time

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 01, 2022, 11:11:09 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 01, 2022, 10:14:12 pmI agree that hard drive reliability is not a particular cause for concern, but my personal experience has been significantly worse than what you report. My total quantity is smaller, though I don't have an exact count. It is in the 30-40 range. And I have had two hard failures, one drive that developed start-up reliability failures and one that got a SMART entry and was losing/corrupting data. Perhaps not surprisingly the failures have occurred in drives 7-12 years old. New enough to be relatively high capacity with tight tolerances and less margins and old enough to have seen significant use. The failure rate has been high enough to keep me reminded of the importance of backups and fortunately I haven't lost any meaningful data for a couple of decades.I do also have to modify that last statement. As the total amount of stored material has increased I have lost data - not because it wasn't on the drives, but because I can't locate it. I know this happens because I have found some of it, sometimes years after the need.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2022, 09:19:08 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on September 01, 2022, 11:11:09 pmCheck the smart values, probably high start stop count?I only buy enterprise grade for my NASses and minimize the power cycles for the 24/7 on devices. The others I just turn on when I need them.This costs energy for standby but does prolong the life , but perhaps that is just a believe of mine. Anyway I was planning to also preventively replace my 24/7 hdds and nas every 4 years but due to the bad economy and relatively low feature new synology nasses (still no 10Gb NIC) I kept waiting. 46000+ hours not bad and still going strong.

author: Connecteur
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2024, 11:03:49 pm
content: Rummaging through some old stuff today, I found my old music player, a Panasonic SV-SD50. I don't exactly know how long it was sitting idle, but I think it was at least 20 years. It had in it one of the biggest capacity SD cards I could afford at the time, 256 MB.I've always been curious about just how long an SD card will hold data; I'd heard 10 years mentioned several times, but I'm sure that was a guess. Anyhow, I put a AAA battery into the player, and all the music was still there, intact. I couldn't say if such longevity applies to more modern SD and micro-SD cards, but they did use larger dies back then, so i couldn't say for sure. But I was surprised at how long this one retained data.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2024, 08:56:06 am
content: Couple of years later, hdd's still going strong bought 5x 18TB for backup of all my stuff.Last year bought a new NAS with SSD's but due to the price kept it to 4x4TB.Since then they became more expensive (+30%)

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2024, 09:55:35 am
content: Quote from: Connecteur on June 16, 2024, 11:03:49 pmDouble post warning. See main thread...https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/longevity-of-sd-data/

author: rkabz
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2024, 12:11:02 pm
content: The hard disk will never die...die-hard computer nerds will keep them alive forever! Pic of still working Seagate ST251, no additional defects, no untoward bearing noise.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2024, 05:15:11 am
content: Yesterday, after two months! of waiting, due to various problems with customs in Japan or I don't know what other problems importing things, I finally received my package!Contains the fastest Toshiba SCSI DVD-RAM/120mm ever made! and never marketed outside JapanSingle-sided, one layer, 4.7 GB, 120mm cartridgesDouble-sided, single layer, 9.4GB, 120mm cartridgeand a Fujitsu SCSI DVD-RAM/80mmSingle-sided, one layer, 1.46 GB, 80mm cartridgeAnd I'm really happy. It's a big, heavy, surprisingly quiet unit that only takes cartridges, just the way I like it!On the one hand the 4GB cartridges are more sufficient for my backups and on the other hand the DVD-RAMs really help to manage the HDDs regarding data redundancy.The unit that reads smaller 80mm cartridges looks a bit like that weird data-media thing Neo uses in the first Matrix movie when the white rabbit knows at his door

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2024, 10:09:41 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on June 23, 2024, 05:15:11 amUnless you have some retro hardware that needs these why would you now start with using obsolete hardware?If something dies you need to scavenge the planet for attick finds from Japan.Cool yes for in the display cabinet, practical

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2024, 01:04:21 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on June 23, 2024, 10:09:41 amWhat would be the modern alternative? Use those crappy USB sticks that lose data if you don't power them? Using SSD as backup is even worse.Yes, I also support both of them, because customers want them, but I don't use them for my personal needs.Where I started working in 2001, they took 16 DVD-RAM v2.0 units around 2003, and they're all still working.Now I no longer work as an internal collaborator, now I'm a freelancer, every now and then they send me DVD-RAMs with documentation and (C, asm, Octave, ... ) sources of things they want me to fix.I have two other DVD-RAM drives installed.The two I imported from Japan in particular havethe 120mm driveit's about 2X times faster than the fastest DVD drive marketed in Europe and Americabetter still - it has a 32Mbyte buffer, never seen before, very useful as a "disk cache", especially if you want to use DVD-RAM as "laser memory" (there are jbox software that make abundant use of it)integrates an RFID reader/writer. If the cartridge has an eeprom-contactless tube, it is very convenient to use the RFID as a "label" or "index" for the contents of the DVDRAM without even having to read it!It has all metal gears, interchangeable belts, high-end motor and bearings, metal rails. Mechanics easily removable in every single part, and it's 2U tall, so it has excellent airflow too!the 80mm ... well there are very few 80mm units. It has nothing special other than supporting a small and rare format. I don't think I'll use it seriously, but I took a dozen 80mm cartridgesFor me DVD-RAM is very practical to handle, has no trouble traveling, and is very long-lasting. It proved this with facts. While many CD-RWs burned (by a Plextor at 1X speed) in 2008 are already unreadable, no DVD-RAM burned in 2004 has ever lost a single byte!Other than that, I'm not using hard to find cartridges, and I got about 400 from Japan, 120mm/4GB cartridges are common, but these have a 2Kbyte RFID, which the Toschiba DVD-RAM is able to read and write .Then on the Linux kernel side... the driver is a pleasure

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2024, 04:47:09 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on June 23, 2024, 01:04:21 pmPortable exchangeable durable: don't know.My usecases are different, 4GB is what I create in two days on holiday pictures alone.Documentation code etc. my data directory now is about 1.5TBSo I use NASses.Backed up two dayly and again weekly on diferent NASses available on evry mobile or fixed device in the house.For data transfer to 3rd parties I use portable SSDs.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2024, 05:27:04 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on June 23, 2024, 04:47:09 pmYes, I was talking about source code (text files), which is what I'm most interested in, since that's what I do for a living.Typically it's less than 4,498,528 bytes total for 1 year of projects, which must have several redundant back-ups.DVD-RAM is just one of them, but it seems the most reliable.It saved me from bad situations in which both the USB stick and the SSD one of customers left unused for 1 year had corrupted the data.Obviously I also had other copies at home, but I didn't have them with me at the time, while I had the DVD-RAMs in a box in the car.For some things that I absolutely cannot lose, I also have aWORMcopy.(If you work with government agencies, or if you do avionics work, sooner or later someone will ask you to burn a WORM)For bigger things, like photos, audio (Wav, mp3, ogs), video (H264/265, MPG4), etc. HDDs and tapes are the best and only possible solution, especially due to the time it takes to write large amounts of data.Still SSD, no. Sure they are faster than HDDs, but Old and modern Flash is no good for secure data storage.Unless you buy several SSDs and cycle them through, copying data from one to the other, and always with another backup medium in parallel.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 24, 2024, 12:48:26 pm
content: I would have gotten a modern DVD or Blu-ray drive and used M-Disc media.I consider write speed to be a red herring since the lowest write speed yields the best write quality and drive life. Blu-ray should be faster anyway even at its slowest write speed.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2024, 07:47:49 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on June 24, 2024, 12:48:26 pmI don't know about Blu-ray, but in my experience DVD is worse than DVD_RAM ​​when it comes to data reliability.Specifically, if on the one hand I have never lost any data saved on a DVD_RAM ​​in over ~1000 cartridges (~50 cartridges per year) in the last 20 years, I have lost almost all the CDRWs that I have burned from 2008 onwards, and I have had at least a dozen cases out of 200, of DVDs with unreadable sectors.DVD better than CDROM? Definitively Yes, but not as good as DVD_RAMQuote from: David Hess on June 24, 2024, 12:48:26 pmAs I indicated in the previous post, I have always burned CD ROMs at 1x with a (SCSI) Plextor CDRW unit, and I have always purchased good quality media, SONY and TDK, and yet I have lost practically everything!(when I say lost ... I lost the data on CDROM, but I had copies both on hard disks and on tape, both DDS4 which absurdly performed better, and on LTO2)DVD-RAM1997, 1x1999, 2x2002, 3x2004, 5x <------------ my default speed2005, 6x2005, 8x <------------ my other two units2005, 12x (I know it exists, but I've never seen it marketed where I come from)2006, 16x <----------- my new Japanese unitI just bought the fastest DVD_RAM ​​in the world, but I don't use it to its fullest, different writing technology from DVDs and CDROMs, however I only ever use it at 5X, like with my other two units

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2024, 08:18:46 am
content: Verbatim M-DISCs are supposed to have an extremely long lifetime (compared to writable CD and DVD discs using organic dyes), but apparently the 25G capacity M-DISCs are just ordinary BD-Rs using inorganic write layers since 2022. This indicates Verbatim is pretty darn sure their BD-R's longevity greatly exceeds that of CD- and DVD-based media.To me, the problem is the high cost of the drives and media: 100€-150€ for a drive supported in Linux, plus about 5€ for each Verbatim M-DISC BD-R (25 Gbytes, 4x write speed). I just don't have anything worth that kind of cost to me, especially when I can get three 240Gbyte WD Green SSDs for under 100€, and use them for backups in a round-robin manner at a regular basis.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2024, 11:11:48 am
content: I thought the M-discs were made of some kind of stone material lasting at least a thousand years, now you are telling me they changed the layers?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2024, 03:28:18 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 25, 2024, 08:18:46 amIf we talk about costs... it's a thorny issue.I really don't likeTray-Loadingoptical units, because I think that leaving an optical medium bare (like CD-ROMs and DVDs) is not smart due to the way the cases are made and the ease with which they allow the medium to become contaminated with dust and humidityMy DVD_RAM cartridges are sealed on 4 sides, and have a slide that opens only when the cartridge is inside the optical drive. While it's not perfect, this helps a lot in my opinion. In addition to the fact that the cartridges can integrate an RFID-EEPROM tube, which I find both bloody convenient and bloody ingenious!-I've spent at least ***7 years*** looking specifically for ***that*** DVD_RAM drive unit, and as much as I've looked for it I've never seen it on eBay and the like.Many many years ago I had the opportunity to try it in a laboratory in Japan (as well as Laser-memory units ... with 5xCDROMs all in one single cartrige. Love this!) and it was love at first sight, I immediately liked it, in addition to the excellent review given to me by the owner, a friend who I respect very much.So, when I finally found one in Osaka I was full of different emotions: Incredibly happy to finally be able to use one for my personal stuff but also disappointed at the amount of money and time I was going to invest in importing.~600 euros, for both the 120 and 80mm units, plus qty=40 120mm-carriages (double side, 2x4.6GB) with an RFID and qty=12 80mm-carriages (single side, 1.45GB), including S/H and customs. All NOS!Both types of cartridge are really very rare (especially the 80mm) and the 120mm with RFID costs about the 2x after import and customs, so much so that I would almost be tempted to try to buy common 120mm cartridges (even single side, 1x4.6 GB) on Amazon and modify them. In the end you just need to find a way - without breaking anything - to install a small RFID tube, which you can still buy on Aliexpress or on Amazon itself.We will seeAnyway, I have to thank a colleague who I met there when I visited Tokyo years ago and he contacted me via email to tell me that he had found some interesting things in the warehouse, news published by a local app that he was consulting.Like for my Japanese PDA that you practically only find in Japan, or the education writing units (which we, "Europeans", call it "distraction free, writing devices") that they only use in Japanese schools, it seems that this kind of thing is only used over there, where it costs much much less compared to their salaries. Blessed are the Japanese!---On the Kernel Linux side... it's a SCSI/50pin(SE) drive that doesn't create any problems with LUNs and has less "quirks" than most of CDROMs and DVD units. It falls into two categories:removable disk block device for the storage partchar-device (there is a physical lvTTY 3.3v serial on the back) for the RFID part.It's almost like it's a hard drive, but it's seen as /dev/sg with a large buffer (here, I hacked the kernel to have it), there's no problem with the partition scheme (I only use mac-parts), and there is no big problems with the filesystem.However UDF/fs (mkudffs) is more suitable (I mean ... the media lives longer with UDF) for DVD-RAM because the number of times you can rewrite a DVD-RAM is limited to ~100K cycles, so if you delete and rewrite a file UDF tries to spread the writes equally over the media, while a filesystem like{ ext2, ext3, ext4, xfs, ...) does not.So, it's also very kernel friendly.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2024, 12:33:55 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on June 25, 2024, 03:28:18 pmCost relative to perceived need and perceived benefits, rather. There is nothing wrong in plonking down the $$ for a tool you actually use, even if it is more about comfort and satisfaction than strict needs. Being happy with the tools you have is pretty important in keeping your motivation and productivity high.

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 26, 2024, 07:25:42 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 26, 2024, 12:33:55 pmIndeed. I like to say the most expensive tool is the one I never use, no matter how little I paid for it. Whereas an expensive quality tool I use every day I will keep benefitting from long after I forget how much it cost me!

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2024, 09:31:36 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on June 25, 2024, 03:28:18 pmWhat do you mean by “tube” here? There aren’t any vacuum tubes in them, and I don’t think anything is tubular in shape, is it?

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 22, 2024, 10:10:09 pm
content: rfid eeprom in tube-shape.they drown them in plastic.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2024, 07:51:33 pm
content: Quote from: DiTBho on August 22, 2024, 10:10:09 pmOh, like the little capsules that are also used to “chip” pets?I’ve never heard them called “tubes”, and the lack of search results under that name makes me think it’s not what they’re normally called. What isn’t obvious (even after trying to find out) though is what their generic name actually is! Rods is maaaaybe the closest I found.

author: radiolistener
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2024, 07:55:19 pm
content: If it ends, it will be bad. Where is alternative for long term data storage?SSD and USB-flash and SD cards are not designed to store data for a long time.

author: Messtechniker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2024, 08:01:47 pm
content: For SSD long term data storage we will need something equivalent to watch movers.I.e. a device which switches the SSDs for long term data storage on and off in certain intervals.Maybe an idea for a patent ....Oops. Mentioning such here might be considered as prior art.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2024, 08:22:34 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on August 23, 2024, 07:51:33 pmYup

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2024, 08:32:12 pm
content: Quote from: radiolistener on August 23, 2024, 07:55:19 pm98% of all the data is worthless in 10 years anyways. The 2% that is worth long time storage and has to be transferred from generation to generation is written in books and will be spread over the whole world in so many places that it can never get lost.Humans tend to over exaggerate the importance of their tiny little time of the entire timeline of the world.And we generate dayly too much useless data.

author: Messtechniker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2024, 09:09:11 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on August 23, 2024, 08:32:12 pmMaybe. But some 12 years after I had translated a manual for a one-off piece of equipment, I was asked for a copy of the translated manual, which the company had lost somehow. Fine with me. Saved the company several xxxx Euros and quite a few tech hours. And there was also an incident of a similar patent related kind with some judicial implications. These things do happen.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2024, 03:44:08 am
content: Quote from: Kjelt on August 23, 2024, 08:32:12 pmI have a box here of photographs, slides and super-8, some of which are > 100 years old and still in "relatively" good condition. They show things as esoteric as the Queen Marys first visit to the port of Fremantle, through to my grandparents and parents history. Based on the rate of deterioration, I'd be surprised if they weren't still readable in another 100 years.I have a (several) hard drive full of photos and video of my dead son. They document and detail a significant part of his life and are the only remaining visual artifacts we have of him. We can print them out, but the prints deteriorate rapidly when compared to a proper photographic process. Therefore we're left to curate and manage this digital archive. It won't be worthless in 10 years, but unless it's replicated onto new media periodically it also won't be readable. I don't trust the LTO will still be readable in 50 years (as specified), and even if it is maintaining a working drive to retrieve it will be a challenge. So we're left to ensure the storage media is kept up to date. Currently magnetic trumps solid state for longevity, so I don't see hard disks going away any time soon.To add to that already mentioned by Messtechniker, we've had numerous opportunities over the years to leverage data that is well and truly > 10 years old finding it valuable not only to our immediate family.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2024, 05:35:21 am
content: Bradc, you have identified just one of the reasons why long term data storage is useful. For more than 2% of data. If widely useful data is so widely distributed that it "will not be lost" why are so many on this forum searching for old manuals and old software? I will agree that not all of the children's homework and snapshots of parties littering our memory devices is worthy of long term storage. But a sizeable fraction is widely useful for human lifetimes, and an even larger fraction is useful for ten years or more. Things to consider when defining storage life requirements are legal issues. In the US contracts and taxes require terms of a few years for almost everything, with patent and copyright law stretching those lengths to decades and centuries respectively.As an aside there are photo printing processes that should have life and quality comparable to traditional photographs. None in consumer level printers currently, but there are those who print for museums and others, although at prices that will limit the quantity.

author: Picuino
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2024, 06:52:11 pm
content: Have you read about this news?https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2024/jul/10/grace-hopper-lost-lecture-found-nsa/We are living in the digital dark age.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2024, 09:54:15 pm
content: I don't know about US or Australias government funded agencies for the preservation of historic audio and video recordings?In Holland we do have such an agency who often gets material from legacies or heritage. They make sure the material is stored safely and if known it will deteriorate or is vulnerable for example the famous movies on celluloid it will preserve them in a more long lasting format.If you have such material that is historical important I would contact such an agency for their opinion, often or they return the original or when really important copies.The material that is important for your family that is for you to preserve. We have pictures from 1880s from my grand-grand parents and many of which we do not even know their names anymore. Is it important? For us maybe for the rest of the world not really.In any case media becomes pretty cheap, you can create and refresh and maintain many backups, where 30 years ago the fotographs would only reside in a single book where a fire could destroy it permanently.It is a question for each and anyone how much money they think it is worth to preserve and keep for the future, remember the more data you store the more time it takes to label select and keep.

author: Connecteur
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2024, 05:32:01 pm
content: I'm a little concerned about data longevity on flash RAM. I don't know much about the technology, but as die sizes get smaller, towards 1 nm, I'm not sure the cells will be as robust as before.I have a couple of 1.5 TB micro SD cards, but I never use them for long term storage. I have a few of the older memory cards from about 20 years ago, and their data is still intact. I'm hoping that the longevity of data stored on the new high capacity cards is just as reliable. I suppose it's too early for there to be any real world data about this.

author: Connecteur
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2024, 05:35:19 pm
content: I suppose I have my own data preservation regime, going back almost 40 years. Every time I got a newer computer with larger storage capacity, I copied my whole archive forward on the new machine. Looking back through my archives, I can find files I created back in the 80s.

author: Connecteur
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2024, 05:36:18 pm
content: It's never seemed worthwhile to comb through it all, deleting the obsolete stuff.Much easier to just save it all.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2024, 05:38:44 pm
content: Quote from: Connecteur on September 11, 2024, 05:32:01 pmHigh density flash has a pretty short retention period. When powered up the cells are regularly refreshed, but stored in a draw somewhere, a drive may lose some of its contents in as little as a year. Its less about the whether they are 1nm or 28nm than the techniques which differentiate the 100 year cells of the type of flash in an MCU, from the cells in the type of flash in a high density flash drive.

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2024, 10:27:22 pm
content: If I had a 1TB SD card or similar, how long would I need to have it powered up for it to refresh itself? A similar time it would take to write data to all locations like in normal usage?

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 11, 2024, 10:36:04 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on August 24, 2024, 03:44:08 amCloud storage is a good and viable option. In the background, you have people working in data centres to ensure the data remains available. There's a bunch of options out there for low to medium data volumes which is quite economically priced.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2024, 10:48:09 pm
content: Quote from: Circlotron on September 11, 2024, 10:27:22 pmThat's an excellent question. They makers tell you that background refresh occurs when the devices are powered up, but I haven't seen anything (e.g. in the SMART data) that shows the status of that refreshing.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 13, 2024, 06:11:16 am
content: Quote from: BradC on August 24, 2024, 03:44:08 amdeveloping photos using chemicals is gone, today is inkjet age you like it or not... if you are really tight... buy cheap consumer grade color printer brand XXX (i use Epson) and buy their photographic grade ink and paper (i use UltraChrome K3 meant for SureLab and Epson Photo Paper), you probably need to tune the color profile in SW or if money still allows, ask one time service for color calibration from whoever has the device (i use Datacolor SpyderX Studio) then you can print your photos all you like with 50-100 yrs longevity. laminate to get 2-3X lifetime, put it in air tight container only to pull out during national holiday every year, and let a little bit light come through into the container to avoid Fungus development (we have one here in this forum)Quote from: BradC on August 24, 2024, 03:44:08 ami printed some of kids/family photos but huge amount are still in HDD (frequently backup and replaced every 5-10yrs) copying job is "some job" i cant count on my kids to take such a job when i'm gone, so one day when i'm free, its better for me to printout the most important moments for my grand grand children to see... if they can continue the HDD/SSD backup job its better... SSD is getting better and cheaper now, and of course much faster than HDD, so i have high confidence HDD will be gone too.. 1TB SSD is getting into "affordable price" range and data retention without power is also improving into years range...ymmv.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2024, 09:21:43 am
content: Quote from: BradC on August 24, 2024, 03:44:08 amMultiple copies of the digital files are definitely important.But FYI, the longevity of printed copies depends entirely on the printing process used.You can still get silver halide based digital photo prints done at some photo labs/studios. But it’s becoming hard to find for sure. And remember that color silver halide doesn’t last that well, especially in sunlight. Look at how color photos from the 60s have deteriorated as the color dyes fade.Dye sublimation looks great, but I don’t think it’s the very best for archival storage, since it’s dye based.Laser printouts should be very durable (since the colors are pigments, not dyes), but they aren’t the very best photo quality.Inkjet is where the professional market has gone. But don’t think for a moment that it’s the same as what you get from a $100 home inkjet. Most home inkjets use dye inks, which aren’t that great for longevity, and when printed on plain paper the lightfastness is poor. But if you use a printer with archival pigment inks, on the matching photo paper, the results should last at least as long as color silver halide prints, if not longer.Both Canon and Epson have pigment-based photo inkjet printers, but only Epson has inks that are expressly claimed to be archival. (And not on all models, you must look carefully.) With that said, even dye prints on photo paper, stored in ideal conditions (in the dark, stacked to keep oxygen away) last a long time. I have photos I printed on a dye-based Canon 20 years ago, onto Canon and Ilford photo papers, stored properly, and they look the same as they did when first printed. Prints protected by glass (i.e. framed) also last a lot longer, since glass blocks UV and oxygen quite effectively.Many photo labs now use inkjet, too, both from Epson and Canon, but also from the traditional vendors of photo lab equipment, like Noritusu. (Some is pigment based, others dye-based, though they swear they’re long-lasting dyes that resist fading.)

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2024, 01:56:18 pm
content: High-end color inkjet printing is sometimes called "giclée".Be careful when googling that word: in French, it also means "ejaculate".

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 15, 2024, 05:21:37 pm
content: Last year I bought a negative scanner to digitize my fathers negatives.Slow as hell but hey... but also here there are negatives where there is no correct firmula to correct all the colors. Kodak Kodachrome X for example. There were so many different films made.....To continue, many of the negatives that were stored in special A4 paper negative holders did not prevent some mold to totally ruin the negatives.The positives we had left, the colors faded. These were from 1971.The special scanner software has some early AI scratch remover but this mold is too extreme it is inside the film. Tried to clean with IPA etc. to no prevail.

author: Zoli
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2024, 06:14:20 am
content: The C41 negative process(introduced in'72) in the last step(stabilization) has some formaldehyde exactly to prevent molding the gelatinous emulsion.As longevity of the pictures: Cibachrome/Ilfochrome and the dye transfer(as example Kodachrome) has longevity comparable to the acrylic paints.As side note, the last two steps(stabilization and washing) in my experience(from the 80's photo lab work) is crucial to the long term stability of the pictures(the longer, the better - within the limit of the materials used).

author: Bryn
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2024, 06:37:12 pm
content: Hard disks will always be with us the same way physical cash will be with us too.Unrelated to the topic somewhat but not everybody would be a fan of saving files on the cloud...

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2024, 06:48:43 pm
content: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/09/12/1957219/music-industrys-1990s-hard-drives-are-dying

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2024, 07:30:02 pm
content: then wait for ceramic/glass based storage...https://siliconangle.com/2024/07/15/cerabyte-launches-prototype-ceramic-based-data-storage-tech-low-cost-long-term-archival-data/https://www.usglassmag.com/microsofts-glass-storage-technology-set-to-revolutionize-cloud-archiving/

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2024, 07:36:25 pm
content: Quote from: Zoli on September 16, 2024, 06:14:20 amI don't believe for a second that Kodachrome is as durable as acrylic paint: pigments are much more stable than dyes. Kodak itself says that Kodachrome slides will fade visiblyin an hourof projection. They're "durable" only when stored in the dark. (Which is still useful, but it's a big caveat.)

author: Bryn
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2024, 07:37:23 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on September 18, 2024, 07:30:02 pmSo we might see "hard drives" made out of these materials? Interesting...

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2024, 08:18:02 pm
content: probably will look like the Vox...

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2024, 08:22:13 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on September 15, 2024, 01:56:18 pmYep. I've known that for years, and it's always struck me as absolutely absurd, and insanely pretentious.I appreciate that more and more, the art world has been switching to just calling them "digital prints" or even "inkjet".<printernerd>N.B. The inkjet printers used when this term originated, theIris continuous inkjets, were absolutely fascinating beasts. They worked fundamentally unlike the drop-on-demand inkjets we now use. First of all, the paper was mounted to a drum, like in a drum scanner. The small printhead moves across the drum slowly, so the paper passes by thousands of times as the drum spins. But the head is the big difference: instead of nozzles that fire on demand, Iris printers use piezoelectric transducers to eject drops from a small row of nozzles at the same time. Every nozzle fires every time, all the time. (Around 1 million per second in the Iris.) The ink drops are selectively statically charged with a row of electrodes just beyond the nozzles (one electrode per nozzle), then deflection plates deflect the desired droplets onto the page. The uncharged droplets continued into the gutter, which then feeds into the waste ink jug. Iris printers used bulk ink bottles, and since most of the ink was wasted, the waste jug was huge. The reason for doing this? Large-format 1800dpi color in 1989, when drop-on-demand inkjets were struggling to do decent 300dpi A4/letter black and white. The flip side was a 6-figure price tag, huge ink waste, and slow printing. They were originally intended for prepress proofs.I saw an Iris at a computer/publishing expo in the mid 90s. The prints were gorgeous.Further reading:https://www.imaging.org/IST/IST/Resources/Tutorials/Inkjet.aspxhttps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/43556768.pdfpage 14ffhttps://students.aiu.edu/submissions/profiles/resources/onlineBook/V9D6F9_Inkjet_Printing.pdfpage 74ffContinuous inkjet still exists, mostly for industrial inkjet printing of things like expiration dates, since it can print at longer distances than on-demand inkjet. Unlike the Iris, though, the waste ink is not discarded, but is instead recycled, with solvent monitoring to compensate for solvent evaporation as the ink cycles around and around.Iris's technology ultimately ended up with Kodak, which makescontinuous inkjet printing pressestoday. (They reverse the droplet deflection: uncharged droplets go to the page, waste ink is deflected. They recirculate the ink, too.)</printernerd>

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2024, 04:47:03 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on September 18, 2024, 07:36:25 pmBeing as durable as acrylic paint isn't very impressive. Most acrylic paint doesn't last very long.The problem with the lifetime of film products is they are very hard to predict. Take photos of a similar age that were processed in the same shop on different days, and have been displayed in a lounge side by side since. The amount of ageing can be radically different, apparently just from day to day variation is the original manufacture of materials, or their processing.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2024, 09:52:06 pm
content: Most pigments in acrylic paint (or any other paint that uses pigments) will outlast the dyes in Kodachrome. That’s my point. Kodachrome dyes are not durable.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2024, 10:12:42 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on November 02, 2024, 09:52:06 pmMost colourings in paint are not actually pigments, especially reds. That's why red cars until recently had a bad reputation for not maintaining their colour very well. Reasonably sun stable red dyes are quite a recent development. The earliest Kodachrome, stored well, has a reputation for still being in excellent shape. Its very different from other forms of colour film. It won't last an eternity, but the only thing we have used for images that has shown any real longevity is certain types of ink drawn onto parchment.

author: Zoli
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2024, 12:27:06 am
content: Quote from: tooki on September 18, 2024, 07:36:25 pmCan you detail what Kodak meant on "visible fading" as measurable quantity and in what conditions? Another dye transfer process is Technicolor; any comments?For the future, it would be nice to sustain your beliefs with some hard numbers/references.