Hard disk data life expectancy?

[TigerTech]

Hi guys.

I have a tech question and I know I can always turn to the experts here at the HARD forum for the answer.

My current obsession is long term data storage. Specifically my home video of my children. After reading about the short life of DVD's and CD's I've been trying to come up with a long-term way to store my home videos aside fromt he actual miniDV tapes they were recorded on.

Aside from the possible breakdown of the hard drive motor I'm under the impression that the data on hard drives is very stable for long term storage. Since the hard drives I'm using aren't running 24/7 I figure they'll be very reliable long-term as long as I keep them cool and dry.

I've ben buying the 400 and 500gig internal Seagate drives and mounting them in USB/Firewire external enclosures. I figure when I've filled one up with videos I can seal them in those vacuum seal bags and store them in a cool, dry place.

What do y'all think? Is this a good way to preserve home video for the long-term? Does data written to a hard drive last a long time if the drive is not used and stored properly?

Thanks for any input or advice you have.

 

[DougLite]

1) Store the data in multiple locations. This will protect you against fire/flood/etc

2) Hard drives are mechanical. They can die at any time, regardless of duty cycle

3) Have you considered flash? It's solid state, although expensive.

4) Most of the time, when a hard drive dies...you find out when you try to start the thing.

 

[MrGuvernment]

tape back up has been found out to be the one of the longest lasting back up mediums currewntly.

next to that is Vinly record, but good luck getting your pics on that


If you want to keep them for a long time - MULTIPLE systems are the way


make multiple miniDV tapes - store them in your banks vualt if needed, store a copy at home, give a copy to a relative you can trust

make multipe harddrive backsups, or solid state, keep one copy, put another in your bank

et cetera.


for me, what has worked for the last 3 years is burning things to DVD, every 6-9 months - i reburn the DVD's to new one - 4x burning speed, kept in a dry place, and my first DVD versions are still good to this day, but i have 2-3 copies of my dvd's now :d

 

[general]

That is an interesting idea you have. The data on the platters might be safe, but there are no guarantees that the drives will work. If you do some digging there might be some research done specifically on this topic. Even if the drive didn't spin, the data would probably be available on the platters at a large cost.

Basically, you'll want to be sure that whatever setup you go with that you don't have one single point of failure. Putting something on one drive is a bad idea. I'm pretty sure a fire would eat through whatever bad you put it in. Put one copy on one drive and a mirror copy on a mirror drive in a remote location. In that way, if a drive fails you have another and if something happens to one location you have another. There are also websites online that will let you store large amounts of data. They are run by people who's job it is to think of these things.

Kudos to you for thinking about this though. Not many people realize the consequences of moving away from film.

 

[NulloModo]

As for another option: you can buy archival quality DVDs and CDs. They cost more than the regular ones (from double the price per disc to more) but they are rated to last much much longer.

 

[TigerTech]

Thanks for the input guys.

Since I'm keeping the original miniDV tapes I consider the hard drive copiesas the backup. I'm almost done filling up my first 400 gig drive that I'll seal up and store in a bank safety deposit box.

I figue that even if the drive won't run in 50 years maybe the data will still be good. If push comes to shove I'm sure there will be some sort of professional operation that could extract the data (movies) and copy it to whatever the latest technology is. The big question really is just how long will the data last on the platters with proper storage?

I started thinking about this when my dad gave me an old box of beta tapes from when I was a kid. I bought an old beta player off of Ebay to try and extract the old video. I don't know if it's the player or the tapes but it just isn't going well. I'd really love to see some of the old footage and I realized how important it is that I preserve my own kids' home movies for them.

Thanks again for the advice. Keep it coming.