How long does data stay on a hard drive?

NeilF

NeilF

NeilF

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Many of us are using external hard drives for backups... Out of interest, if you were just to leave the drive untouched for years, how long would the data on it last for? 5yrs? 10? 25?
 
I'd never really thought about it but I don't think there is a limit or at least not in your lifetime, since drives work on magnetic principles they will only lose the data if demagnitised, overwritten or otherwise damaged. As far as I'm aware you could store data on them almost indefinitely - if it helps any a few years back I tried a 40mb hard drive in my computer at the time and it still read the data, completely useless as the drive was at least 5 years old and I didn't have programs to open the data but it was there. I've also got a 520mb Connor drive pulled from a 486 which must be knocking on for 10+ years old and that worked last time I tried it, stupidly noisy and slow but it worked.
 
As long as the drive remains sealed and away from strong magnets and magnetic fields it should last forever I assume.

I too have ancient drives from old computers 386/486 era and they are still working. I can still fire up "Jill of the Jungle" and travel back to the old days :)
 
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The problem you will have is the drive mechanics seizing up. Hard drives need to be used every now and then - this actually extends their life.
 
What about cosmic rays and the earths magnetic field ... over time I would excpect these to play a part in degrading the quality of the data storage mechanism as entropy generally increases ... Hell, if a super nova went off nearby your backups would be stuffed!!!
 
drak3 said:
As long as the drive remains sealed and away from strong magnets and magnetic fields it should last forever I assume.

I too have ancient drives from old computers 386/486 era and they are still working. I can still fire up "Jill of the Jungle" and travel back to the old days :)
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Nothing lasts forever. Did you not see that programme on TV about what would happen if mankind vanished? Was compelling and depressing, there would be no trace of us or our technology after a few hundred thousand years.
 
Snakedoctor said:
Nothing lasts forever. Did you not see that programme on TV about what would happen if mankind vanished? Was compelling and depressing, there would be no trace of us or our technology after a few hundred thousand years.
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I've got to admit I don't really care much about my data beyond the next hundred years or so which makes the prospect of a few hundred thousand years a bit academic. :)
 
It not just the platter surface to think about, there are also the mechanical parts that will eventually fail or the bearings dry out/sieze.

Everything will eventually over time degenerate/rust/oxidise etc etc

Deks
 
philjohn said:
The problem you will have is the drive mechanics seizing up. Hard drives need to be used every now and then - this actually extends their life.
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Agreed. Far better life if you use a drive then let the bearings seize. I have seen this happen on a number of occasions with disk drives being used for long term backups
 
Snakedoctor said:
Nothing lasts forever. Did you not see that programme on TV about what would happen if mankind vanished? Was compelling and depressing, there would be no trace of us or our technology after a few hundred thousand years.
Click to expand...

Sounds interesting, can you recall the programme's name?
 
Isn't there lubricant on the platers that goes funny after a while? I remember going to IBM and seeing a scanning electron microcope picture of a hard drive where it literaly had a virus (well somethign growing on the plater) they said a whole batch had been infected..
 
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