I'm archiving a bunch of projects that will go off into my safety deposit box - figure 10TB or more of data. Since these projects will retire soon - we can call it long term storage, but I've learned in the past 30 years of consulting, no product ever really retires.
Doing my research over the last few days has piqued my curiosity into looking for real data. Not specs, not guarantees, real data. I know google published something quite some time ago regarding their disk failure rates. I'm a huge believer in SSD over spinners, but I've learned that if you don't plug in the SSD from time to time, the data goes stale. As a parallel, I also read that spinners need to be spun up from time to time to oil their bearings. So, as I type this, I glance over to a 1/2 dozen 128GB and 256GB thumb drives, and it made me wonder how long data on that would last?
I'm just looking for some reputable links if you have them. I've been reading here on the pros and cons of different tech. It seems that everything fails. Case in point: there seems to be a strong argument that tape backups have far longer longevity than anything else. So, after gotten accustomed to grabbing a 1TB USB SSD drive for cheap, I was taken back by the prices. That's fine. Then I started wondering - I probably need to buy 2 tape units - one for emergency reserve should people stop making them... and down the overthinking tidy bowl hole I went.
Interestingly, I have only had one hard drive failure in 25+ years (spinner). My SSDs are thundering along (and I beat the hell out of them). I have thumb drives that I am fondly attached too, and they too have never failed.
So, don't want to start a debate about what tech is best, but I would like to read some articles that dive deep into the subject. Heck, maybe I'll write some code and pound on my USB drive for a few years...
Doing my research over the last few days has piqued my curiosity into looking for real data. Not specs, not guarantees, real data. I know google published something quite some time ago regarding their disk failure rates. I'm a huge believer in SSD over spinners, but I've learned that if you don't plug in the SSD from time to time, the data goes stale. As a parallel, I also read that spinners need to be spun up from time to time to oil their bearings. So, as I type this, I glance over to a 1/2 dozen 128GB and 256GB thumb drives, and it made me wonder how long data on that would last?
I'm just looking for some reputable links if you have them. I've been reading here on the pros and cons of different tech. It seems that everything fails. Case in point: there seems to be a strong argument that tape backups have far longer longevity than anything else. So, after gotten accustomed to grabbing a 1TB USB SSD drive for cheap, I was taken back by the prices. That's fine. Then I started wondering - I probably need to buy 2 tape units - one for emergency reserve should people stop making them... and down the overthinking tidy bowl hole I went.
Interestingly, I have only had one hard drive failure in 25+ years (spinner). My SSDs are thundering along (and I beat the hell out of them). I have thumb drives that I am fondly attached too, and they too have never failed.
So, don't want to start a debate about what tech is best, but I would like to read some articles that dive deep into the subject. Heck, maybe I'll write some code and pound on my USB drive for a few years...
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