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> Do you really think in 10-15 years it will be hard to find a device that still talks USB? It would take some time to find a miniUSB patch right now, especial

> Do you really think in 10-15 years it will be hard to find a device that still talks USB? It would take some time to find a miniUSB patch right now, especially a good one. Sure, now I can find it. In 10 years? N=1 anecdote: two years ago I helped to recover data from a 2.5" USB drive, which was left in a desk for 5 years. I was forced to use R-Studio and still I got only 90% of data in good enough condition.

vel0city 3y ago
A 2.5" HDD isn't the same kind of media as an M-DISC. Magnetic storage will lose its charge over time. I've lost content from bitrot on magnetic media many times as well. Arguing I won't be able to read an M-DISC in 10 years because your magnetic media wore out in 5 years is beyond comparing apples to oranges. > It would take some time to find a miniUSB patch right now, especially a good one. I've got a pile of them already. I'll likely keep at least one, probably multiple, along with the optical drive/enclsure (of which I do have multiple as well). I imagine if I hold on to a new in box USB optical drive it will also probably have a cable. So in 10 years when I need to get the data off the drive, I'll probably just use the cable that's right there with the drive that's currently sitting on my desk. I can go down the street to Microcenter right now and buy one, they have dozens of cables in-stock in-person. There are other stores around in-person which also still sell them. There's loads of vendors online which sell them new today. To my eyes they're not hard to find today at least. I can't imagine in 10 years I'll have somehow exhausted the cables I currently have and will need to source one and there won't even be a listing on ebay for one when there's probably at least many hundreds of millions if not billions of them in existence at the moment. For reference, every PS3 had a mini-USB cable, and there were >84M of those sold. How many other devices came with a mini-USB cable? How many were manufactured and sold on their own? How many are still being produced? I can't imagine there being probably near billions of something existing and then disappearing entirely a decade from now, other than some kind of food or truly disposable item.
- saltcured 3y ago
  Hmm, I've seen old HDDs fail to spin up or otherwise have catastrophic malfunction, but never heard of them having real bit rot. I recently booted up some portable PCs from around 1990 to review their HDD content and scrub the disk state before handing them over as e-waste. Easily 25 years on the shelf. I would think you'd have to do something very wrong like storing the HDD near a degausser to lose the magnetic recording. I do think that SSDs and particularly cheap flash "thumb drives" are capable of having bit rot when left on the shelf for many years.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Did you actually validate every bit was exactly right on the drive? Did you even have the information to validate that data? Not just that they booted up without a noticeable error, but that every bit was exactly as written 25 years ago? How many drives did you test, how many manufacturers? Most of the bits will probably be fine. Some of them probably won't be. The rate depends on a myriad of factors. Even within a brand different models will be better or worse, and it's not exactly a metric you'll find listed. And then yes the way they're stored is also a factor and even the environment when the data was written. I've had drives from the 80s still work and still pretty much have all the data. I've had files get corrupted on modern drives with no other explanation than bitrot. Even just cosmic rays can eventually flip some bits.
    - saltcured 3y ago
      Fair enough, I did not have checksums to compare. And I only randomly sampled the contents, not every single file. But yes, it booted and every program I tried executed normally and every data file I inspected seemed valid. I do have some familiarity with how such old systems would misbehave with corrupt data, such as from bad data cables. I didn't see any of those kinds of symptoms and so do not think there was any significant storage decay from being on the shelf at least 5x longer than the 5 year interval mentioned up thread. I tend to think that such a failing drive must have had some other kind of damage and not just some kind of spontaneous demagnetization
      - 3y ago
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > Arguing It's more about winning a jackpot in storage lottery. That HDD shouldn't had that data corrupted so bad, yet it did. > I've got a pile of them already And I have at least two without actually looking in the 'cables box'. 10-15 years ago I had from five to ten of them at any time, but what about some time later? > along with the optical drive/enclsure My desktop DVD drive just quietly died after prolonged period of no usage, just being powered on. You know when I found out? When I needed to read a DVD. > Microcenter right now and buy one, they have dozens of cables in-stock in-person Now? Sure. Two years ago I even saw an Apple 30-pin cable in the same type of store (and I checked now, they still sell it, even in two colours). Would there be a 30-pin cables on sale in 10 years? Doubt so, even in 5 is questionable. And now everyone and their grandmother are moving to Type-C for everything. The same store has no Type-A -> mini-USB cables, except the weird one with additional miniJack on the Type-A side. > I can't imagine You can't. Do you still have Nokia thin charger? Moto CE-Bus? And you missed the point arguing about specifically mini-USB. Sure there are a lot of mini-USB cables out there. But at some point most of them would be in the dumpster pile. Just like Wide SCSI and FireWire cables now.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    > That HDD shouldn't had that data corrupted so bad, yet it did. No, that sounds like just what I'd expect from magnetic storage. > Now? Sure. Well yeah, you specifically scoped it to today in your comment with the words "right now". And no, it's not the weird multi-head variety, they have just regular USB-A to mini-USB. And then thanks for showing that even a decade after the dock connector was phased out it's still easily to find the cables in store today. And thanks for pointing out there's multiple varieties of MiniUSB cables sold today, really reinforcing the idea it's still easy to find. https://www.microcenter.com/product/263914/qvs-cc2215m-06-usb-mini-b-sync-charger-high-speed-cable https://www.microcenter.com/product/263914/qvs-cc2215m-06-us... > Do you still have Nokia thin charger? Moto CE-Bus? No, but neither of those were even a fraction of market penetration as MiniUSB. My household maybe had one Nokia charger that wasn't just a barrel (of which yes we still have compatible barrel connectors despite being nearly 30 years since). Meanwhile my household has probably received close to 50+ MiniUSB cables over the decades. Are you seriously arguing Moto CE-Bus was as popular as MiniUSB? > Just like Wide SCSI and FireWire cables now. Well if they're like SCSI and Firewire cables today I guess I shouldn't have a problem. There's Firewire in-stock in-person at Microcenter today, right now, as well. eBay and Amazon has tons of listings for SCSI cables, I could get a dozen in just a few days. So it sounds like it should be pretty easy to find MiniUSB if Firewire is the earlier example.

vel0city 3y ago

A 2.5" HDD isn't the same kind of media as an M-DISC. Magnetic storage will lose its charge over time. I've lost content from bitrot on magnetic media many times as well. Arguing I won't be able to read an M-DISC in 10 years because your magnetic media wore out in 5 years is beyond comparing apples to oranges. > It would take some time to find a miniUSB patch right now, especially a good one. I've got a pile of them already. I'll likely keep at least one, probably multiple, along with the optical drive/enclsure (of which I do have multiple as well). I imagine if I hold on to a new in box USB optical drive it will also probably have a cable. So in 10 years when I need to get the data off the drive, I'll probably just use the cable that's right there with the drive that's currently sitting on my desk. I can go down the street to Microcenter right now and buy one, they have dozens of cables in-stock in-person. There are other stores around in-person which also still sell them. There's loads of vendors online which sell them new today. To my eyes they're not hard to find today at least. I can't imagine in 10 years I'll have somehow exhausted the cables I currently have and will need to source one and there won't even be a listing on ebay for one when there's probably at least many hundreds of millions if not billions of them in existence at the moment. For reference, every PS3 had a mini-USB cable, and there were >84M of those sold. How many other devices came with a mini-USB cable? How many were manufactured and sold on their own? How many are still being produced? I can't imagine there being probably near billions of something existing and then disappearing entirely a decade from now, other than some kind of food or truly disposable item.

saltcured 3y ago
Hmm, I've seen old HDDs fail to spin up or otherwise have catastrophic malfunction, but never heard of them having real bit rot. I recently booted up some portable PCs from around 1990 to review their HDD content and scrub the disk state before handing them over as e-waste. Easily 25 years on the shelf. I would think you'd have to do something very wrong like storing the HDD near a degausser to lose the magnetic recording. I do think that SSDs and particularly cheap flash "thumb drives" are capable of having bit rot when left on the shelf for many years.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Did you actually validate every bit was exactly right on the drive? Did you even have the information to validate that data? Not just that they booted up without a noticeable error, but that every bit was exactly as written 25 years ago? How many drives did you test, how many manufacturers? Most of the bits will probably be fine. Some of them probably won't be. The rate depends on a myriad of factors. Even within a brand different models will be better or worse, and it's not exactly a metric you'll find listed. And then yes the way they're stored is also a factor and even the environment when the data was written. I've had drives from the 80s still work and still pretty much have all the data. I've had files get corrupted on modern drives with no other explanation than bitrot. Even just cosmic rays can eventually flip some bits.
  - saltcured 3y ago
    Fair enough, I did not have checksums to compare. And I only randomly sampled the contents, not every single file. But yes, it booted and every program I tried executed normally and every data file I inspected seemed valid. I do have some familiarity with how such old systems would misbehave with corrupt data, such as from bad data cables. I didn't see any of those kinds of symptoms and so do not think there was any significant storage decay from being on the shelf at least 5x longer than the 5 year interval mentioned up thread. I tend to think that such a failing drive must have had some other kind of damage and not just some kind of spontaneous demagnetization
    - 3y ago
justsomehnguy 3y ago
> Arguing It's more about winning a jackpot in storage lottery. That HDD shouldn't had that data corrupted so bad, yet it did. > I've got a pile of them already And I have at least two without actually looking in the 'cables box'. 10-15 years ago I had from five to ten of them at any time, but what about some time later? > along with the optical drive/enclsure My desktop DVD drive just quietly died after prolonged period of no usage, just being powered on. You know when I found out? When I needed to read a DVD. > Microcenter right now and buy one, they have dozens of cables in-stock in-person Now? Sure. Two years ago I even saw an Apple 30-pin cable in the same type of store (and I checked now, they still sell it, even in two colours). Would there be a 30-pin cables on sale in 10 years? Doubt so, even in 5 is questionable. And now everyone and their grandmother are moving to Type-C for everything. The same store has no Type-A -> mini-USB cables, except the weird one with additional miniJack on the Type-A side. > I can't imagine You can't. Do you still have Nokia thin charger? Moto CE-Bus? And you missed the point arguing about specifically mini-USB. Sure there are a lot of mini-USB cables out there. But at some point most of them would be in the dumpster pile. Just like Wide SCSI and FireWire cables now.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > That HDD shouldn't had that data corrupted so bad, yet it did. No, that sounds like just what I'd expect from magnetic storage. > Now? Sure. Well yeah, you specifically scoped it to today in your comment with the words "right now". And no, it's not the weird multi-head variety, they have just regular USB-A to mini-USB. And then thanks for showing that even a decade after the dock connector was phased out it's still easily to find the cables in store today. And thanks for pointing out there's multiple varieties of MiniUSB cables sold today, really reinforcing the idea it's still easy to find. https://www.microcenter.com/product/263914/qvs-cc2215m-06-usb-mini-b-sync-charger-high-speed-cable https://www.microcenter.com/product/263914/qvs-cc2215m-06-us... > Do you still have Nokia thin charger? Moto CE-Bus? No, but neither of those were even a fraction of market penetration as MiniUSB. My household maybe had one Nokia charger that wasn't just a barrel (of which yes we still have compatible barrel connectors despite being nearly 30 years since). Meanwhile my household has probably received close to 50+ MiniUSB cables over the decades. Are you seriously arguing Moto CE-Bus was as popular as MiniUSB? > Just like Wide SCSI and FireWire cables now. Well if they're like SCSI and Firewire cables today I guess I shouldn't have a problem. There's Firewire in-stock in-person at Microcenter today, right now, as well. eBay and Amazon has tons of listings for SCSI cables, I could get a dozen in just a few days. So it sounds like it should be pretty easy to find MiniUSB if Firewire is the earlier example.