[clug] Recovering data from old disks. Max age observed?

[Keith Goggin]

A flippant comment I know but I'm told that even tomb stones become 
unreadable in time.

On 14/6/19 4:37 pm, steve jenkin via linux wrote:
> I recently read the contents of a 2010 x 1TB USB-2 external hard-drive that had Apple “Time Machine” data on it.
>
> Had to resort to ‘ddrescue’ - there were 17 hard errors detected.
>
> The important points here:
> 	- old disk had been sitting collecting dust for years. Perhaps out of service in 2014.
> 	- I not pressing it back into service, just hoping it’d hold together.
> 		Now I’ve got the data off, I can discard the hardware.
>
> Newer disks are higher density, meaning finer tolerances, more complex engineering (surface lubricants mandatory now) and possibly more susceptible to data loss because the sub-systems are closer to theoretical limits.
>
> Upshot:
> 	I don’t expect to be able to recover data from my 2015 disk in 2025.
> 	But how can ‘ultimate life’ be calculated?
>
> Other people much have recovered data from old disks, even used disks continuously (daily or weekly), for much longer than the nominal design life of 5 years.
>
> The contra for long lived drives is all the drives that fail early… The random factors combine to shorten and extend life.
>
> I’ve come to realise I now have to consciously ‘curate’ my old data if I want to keep it.
>
> Which means saving filesystem image [or LVM],, not direct to partition, ‘data scrubbing’ often enough to be happy with finding latent errors, and an intentional “collect, copy, retire” activity.
>
> Haven’t got there yet, only just starting. Still haven’t even found / collected all my old disk drives :)
>
> regards
> steve
>
> --
> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design
> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>
> mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
>
>