Data retention capacity

[delco007]

Hi ,
i have been looking for this answer for quite a long time : for a tape drive its said that it can hold the data stored on it for 30 yrs but what about a SATA , IDE or a SCSI drive ??
What if I store data on a hard drive and then take it off the system and keep it in a cupboard ???
Will the data get corrupted over time ?? If yes then for how long can a hard drive hold data without any corruption?

Guys if you can recommend me some forum which specially deals with hard drives , file systems and their working then do let me know about them .

Thanks

Guru

 

[Nathelion]

Hard drives will de-magnetize over time. There's also the problem of moving parts; if the bearings and such have given out after your 30 years of storage, well, the head is going to dive into the platter and bye-bye data (although that part could be overcome by only storing the platters, not the whole drive).
I'm not sure about the time frames though.

 

[themisfit610]

Archival is a real pain.

Sure, a good tape might be stable for 30 years, but how are you going to read it? What's the last time you saw one of those ancient tape backup drives we were using 15 years ago?

Sure, if you got an old machine together, and found a working drive you could probably get the data off an old tape.

True archival of anything - especially video data is VERY difficult. All available media will degrade to some extent. Your best bet is to keep your data on some very common media, and transfer it to the new standard every 5-10 years. I would keep no fewer than two (ideally three) backups.

~MiSfit

 

[delco007]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Archival is a real pain.

Sure, a good tape might be stable for 30 years, but how are you going to read it? What's the last time you saw one of those ancient tape backup drives we were using 15 years ago?

Sure, if you got an old machine together, and found a working drive you could probably get the data off an old tape.

True archival of anything - especially video data is VERY difficult. All available media will degrade to some extent. Your best bet is to keep your data on some very common media, and transfer it to the new standard every 5-10 years. I would keep no fewer than two (ideally three) backups.

~MiSfit

Don't mean to offend you or something like that but if i am not wrong then almost all the servers in the world take backup on tape drives . However its a good idea to store the data on some common media such as IDE drives and after a few years copy the data to a new standard storage device .
but for the time being i am thinking to move to SCSI drives . I am kindaa tired of changing hard drives .

 

[Peter]

Backup and Archive are very different tasks.

Tape is good for backup since media are removable, transportable, and reusable.

For archives, optical technology, particular magneto-optical, is a better choice because recordings don't fade like magnetic ones inadvertently do. Storing the media so they don't dissolve altogether is the difficult bit here.
Also, keeping at least one reader device working over the archiving period is the most difficult part of it anyway. Ask NASA.