Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Has anyone ever had drives that lasted for decades? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by ImHidingtheRealMe@alien.top to c/datahoarder@selfhosted.forum

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I keep hearing people say that hard drives won’t last long and to always have backups. But if it is like that, that means you would have to be buying drives consistently? Has anyone ever had a hard drive work for them successfully for a decade or even more where they wouldn’t have to be buying more?

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[–] disktape@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I bought maybe 100-120 HDDs of all brands and capacities since ~2001 and I believe 3 of them have failed so far:
- One 2 TB WD Black from ~2010 died after 3-4 years (one out of 20)
- One 2 TB WD Red from ~2012 died in 2021 (one out of 10)
- One 8 TB Seagate Exos (NLSAS) from ~2018 died recently (one out of 10)

All others are still spinning or have been retired due to their small size. In particular, eight of the 2 TB Reds are still in the server which is sitting in a dusty, wet, and cold garage. As I said, one has died, and one is a cold spare that has 0 hours despite being made more than 10 years ago.