3 ms·

Wow HDD's really are the new tape drives

salesguy222 10y ago
it's a shame that HDDs fail/lose integrity so much more quickly than tape cartridges used in an equivalent manner :( but if you put them on a shelf, then the life is roughly the same :D
- Alupis 10y ago
  > but if you put them on a shelf, then the life is roughly the same :D Careful, that's not always the case. Anecdotally, I lost a few TB's of data recently after assuming my drives sitting on the shelf (inside anti-static bags) would be fine after only a couple of years. Plugging each drive in prompted the Windows popup asking if I wanted to initialize the drives! Total data loss on all 4 drives after only a couple of years on the shelf. It wasn't a big loss to me, because I couldn't even remember what data was on the drives... but I wouldn't rely on this for business data. Tapes still have their purpose.
  - salesguy222 10y ago
    Interesting story, was it a hardware failure that caused the loss, or was it Windows deciding to wipe them? Apologies if I'm missing something obvious disks are also much more succeptible to vibrations than tape. the only thing is that maintaining tape expertise to pull data back into modern systems is a bit difficult
    - Alupis 10y ago
      > was it a hardware failure that caused the loss, or was it Windows deciding to wipe them? No, mechanically they all work fine... just no data on them anymore. I believe the partition table became corrupted, so Windows just thinks its a wiped/new drive and asks if you want to initialize it. In my case, I said "No", and will attempt data recovery sometime when I'm bored (TestDisk[1] might just be able to restore the partition table, allowing me to extract data from the drives then perform a real wipe, otherwise a more serious data recovery tool like StellarPhoenix, GetDataBackNFTS or similar will be required). > disks are also much more succeptible to vibrations than tape They sure are. There are other factors too, such as radiation (from solar flares and more), temperature, and more that can cause "bit rot", even for a drive not in use. > the only thing is that maintaining tape expertise to pull data back into modern systems is a bit difficult Usually not so much. Whatever utility you used to create the backup tape almost assuredly has the ability to restore data from the tape. Some even are full disk images written to tape, which allows you to put a tape drive into a new system and restore the entire thing... while others only backup data to tape, etc. [1] http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    Are you sure it was a total loss? There are some pretty good open source programs you can run and try to recover the data as long as the drive still spins. I recently went through some of my own drives (old backups from many years ago as well as one 2 TB drive in my NAS that decided it wanted to start failing). Photorec[0] and ddrescue[1] came in handy. They can take a long time to run (I did multiple ddrescue passes on my 2TB drive and recovered all but 16 MB, but it took about a week's worth of time), but it may be worth a shot. [0] http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/
    - Alupis 10y ago
      > Are you sure it was a total loss? There are some pretty good open source programs you can run and try to recover the data as long as the drive still spin Data recovery will likely work, since they mechanically work and Windows does see them as drives, just no data (says uninitialized). My initial thought was it's just the partition table that was corrupted, so something like TestDisk might easily restore the table and allow me to extract my data. Otherwise something more serious would be needed... at this point though, I can't remember what's on the drives, so my effort level is minimal. My "total loss" statement was more along the lines of using hard disks for backups. Having a corrupted partition table from the drive sitting on a shelf isn't a good thing to rely on for backups. If it were business data, it would have been on tapes instead of disks.
      - iamatworknow 10y ago
        Fair enough. The drives I looked at didn't have any particularly pertinent information on them either, but I actually made a pretty fun weekend out of learning how to recover data and re-live some of my personal history starting from around 1999. I felt like some sort of digital archeologist -- reading e-mails and looking at pictures.

it's a shame that HDDs fail/lose integrity so much more quickly than tape cartridges used in an equivalent manner :( but if you put them on a shelf, then the life is roughly the same :D

Alupis 10y ago
> but if you put them on a shelf, then the life is roughly the same :D Careful, that's not always the case. Anecdotally, I lost a few TB's of data recently after assuming my drives sitting on the shelf (inside anti-static bags) would be fine after only a couple of years. Plugging each drive in prompted the Windows popup asking if I wanted to initialize the drives! Total data loss on all 4 drives after only a couple of years on the shelf. It wasn't a big loss to me, because I couldn't even remember what data was on the drives... but I wouldn't rely on this for business data. Tapes still have their purpose.
- salesguy222 10y ago
  Interesting story, was it a hardware failure that caused the loss, or was it Windows deciding to wipe them? Apologies if I'm missing something obvious disks are also much more succeptible to vibrations than tape. the only thing is that maintaining tape expertise to pull data back into modern systems is a bit difficult
  - Alupis 10y ago
    > was it a hardware failure that caused the loss, or was it Windows deciding to wipe them? No, mechanically they all work fine... just no data on them anymore. I believe the partition table became corrupted, so Windows just thinks its a wiped/new drive and asks if you want to initialize it. In my case, I said "No", and will attempt data recovery sometime when I'm bored (TestDisk[1] might just be able to restore the partition table, allowing me to extract data from the drives then perform a real wipe, otherwise a more serious data recovery tool like StellarPhoenix, GetDataBackNFTS or similar will be required). > disks are also much more succeptible to vibrations than tape They sure are. There are other factors too, such as radiation (from solar flares and more), temperature, and more that can cause "bit rot", even for a drive not in use. > the only thing is that maintaining tape expertise to pull data back into modern systems is a bit difficult Usually not so much. Whatever utility you used to create the backup tape almost assuredly has the ability to restore data from the tape. Some even are full disk images written to tape, which allows you to put a tape drive into a new system and restore the entire thing... while others only backup data to tape, etc. [1] http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  Are you sure it was a total loss? There are some pretty good open source programs you can run and try to recover the data as long as the drive still spins. I recently went through some of my own drives (old backups from many years ago as well as one 2 TB drive in my NAS that decided it wanted to start failing). Photorec[0] and ddrescue[1] came in handy. They can take a long time to run (I did multiple ddrescue passes on my 2TB drive and recovered all but 16 MB, but it took about a week's worth of time), but it may be worth a shot. [0] http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/
  - Alupis 10y ago
    > Are you sure it was a total loss? There are some pretty good open source programs you can run and try to recover the data as long as the drive still spin Data recovery will likely work, since they mechanically work and Windows does see them as drives, just no data (says uninitialized). My initial thought was it's just the partition table that was corrupted, so something like TestDisk might easily restore the table and allow me to extract my data. Otherwise something more serious would be needed... at this point though, I can't remember what's on the drives, so my effort level is minimal. My "total loss" statement was more along the lines of using hard disks for backups. Having a corrupted partition table from the drive sitting on a shelf isn't a good thing to rely on for backups. If it were business data, it would have been on tapes instead of disks.
    - iamatworknow 10y ago
      Fair enough. The drives I looked at didn't have any particularly pertinent information on them either, but I actually made a pretty fun weekend out of learning how to recover data and re-live some of my personal history starting from around 1999. I felt like some sort of digital archeologist -- reading e-mails and looking at pictures.