HELEND

Scariest thing I've heard in awhile.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Shouldn’t be (or taken literally). Buy good quality drives, keep an up to date local backup and a 3rd copy of your data off-site for disaster recovery with versioning, and you’ll be fine.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

Some random comments:

Long long ago before the turn of the century and before I retired I was working on a relatively large system. Like most programs in our business it was classified and developed under draconian configuration management. That means software development was conducted on physically secure servers separate from other program’s servers. The IT folks had procured an EMS storage system that was placed with the servers in a corner of our secure lab that housed the hardware under development concurrent with the software. The rack that held the servers and the EMC system was small and largely ignored. One day a guy looked at it and inquired “What does that light mean?” It turns out that when a dick failed the system recovers without missing a beat and “phones home” to alert support to come replace the failed hardware. Oops! In the classified environment connections to the outside are verboten. That light ahd been on for several days. Presumably your RAID system would not be ignored.

You forgot the dreaded meteor landing on my house. I keep three backup disks in circulation one of which resides in a safe deposit box. Each year I establish a new set of three. They have been WD Passport drives. But this year I have switched to internal bare SSD drives and a USB-3 to SADA adaptor. Cheaper, thinner and possibly better reliability. As a last ditch backup the past years master files from the camera plus the latest catalog are sent to AWS Glacier which is the cheapest most reliable write often read once storage I found.

Give the guy a break. He undoubtedly believes what he said. Just don’t act on advice from strangers whose qualifications are unknown. Like me!

I have never heard that. I have a set of encrypted thumb drives I use to store all personnel information such as TurboTax data that are almost 30 years old. No problems and they are less sophisticated than modern internal drives.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Undoubtedly he believes what he said. No problem with him doing that, his choice.
I just VERY, very strongly disagree with him.

(Lotta people believe in little (or big) green men also.)

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, in the day when the EMC Symetrix was THE most robust storage used for mission critical aps, the customer didn’t have the key to the rack. EMC came on site and did everything including changing drives. When I worked for EMC, we were past that. Prior to EMC, when I was at NetApp and they were the arch enemy and target, when ever we took a Symetrix in on trade, we’d gut it and ship the rack back to corporate. They would place an aquarium inside, ship it back, and we’d use it as a display tank in our lobby (with the EMC logo intact). They really were beautifully constructed machines with triple mirroring and a built in battery and UPS - I still have the battery box out of the last one we gutted.

It is true (even though SSD technology is essentially NAND Flash like thumb drives) that some SSDs do/did lose data if not powered periodically - we’ve actually had a member start a thread on exactly that after experiencing it. Depends on the particular mfg and what level the SSD is. I’ve personally never experienced it, because all my SSDs are either on all the time or cycled on regularly, and perhaps that is no longer an issue, but it was in the early days.

Glad you’re prepared for that meteorite

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

A lot of things ... etc.
For many of us oldies, IDE hard drives used to last @ 2 years. Then they'd squeal a bit.
With this new fangled Sata, they work and last a lot longer.
I'm waiting for a WD 8tb drive in the mail- 10 years ago or so that'd be 5x (Raid) 2tb drives.
Times have changed. We're just catching up slower.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

That 18-24 months sounds like something an electronics store salesman may say to customers in order to boost sales.

rkaminer Loc: New York, NY

I remember the first big hard driveway we had in our lab, it was the width of a 19” rack and about 6”high. The replacement cost was $12,000 (in those times) and it was a whopping 64Mb capacity. It lasted about 18 months and we had to replace it, but then the drives were 128Mb; the 64Mb was already obsolete. Maybe that is where the 18-24 month longevity expectations came from. The drives made in the last 20 years are much better than that.

dbfalconer Loc: Salida CO

Thanks to all who shared insights, experiences, and advice on this thread. I never dreamed it would generate so many responses. While much of the technical info is beyond my understanding, I now realize I need to improve my backup system and my overall workflow. Thanks very much! (And watch out for a jump in snake oil stock prices!)

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Distribution is good, but wide distribution is better. The safe deposit box sounds good for local disasters until you think about the last few years when regional disasters became more commonplace. Think about the Paradise fire, which burnt the whole town (presumably including the bank which contained the safe deposit boxes).

This is why cloud services are important. Their distribution is across the country, if not across continents. That is insulation from regional disasters.

"When it comes to backup you can't be too paranoid"

cyclespeed Loc: Calgary, Alberta Canada

My brother-in-law replaces his gas hot water heater every 10 years. As he says he hasn't had a midnight flood in his basement ever. I say his risk tolerance is exceptionally low. Same for the those with 18-24 month replacements schedules for their external hard drives.

JeffR Loc: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

Agreed. As long as you have at least 2 backups, why replace a drive before it dies? Makes no sense to me.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Your old IDE drive had lubricated bearings, and as far as I know, all modern drives use air bearings. As for performance, the fastest full stroke seek time of a SAS or SATA drive hasn’t changed in over a decade - physical limitation. As far as sequential performance, the reason HDs are faster now is because or the Ariel density of the media, not because the spindle is moving faster. In fact, max drive speed is actually slower - remember the 15K RPM Seagate Chetah? To my knowledge, there are no 15K drives any more. What has changed is the density. Partially due to finer grain magnetic media, partially due to the availability of blue LEDs for head positioning, and partially due to the use of multiple platters. HDs have just about reached the plateau, while SSD capacity is going straight up while the cost is coming down - the shift in technology is well underway, we’re just nearing the end of the long HD road (in my opinion).

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Wow, all my computers that had IDE drives were still working when I upgraded computers.
I was upset when I found that the new computer's drives were SATA and couldn't use the IDEs anymore.
I never had an IDE drive fail at all.