Data fading away.....

[KarelB]

First of all, many thanks for a great little course. You dealt with a lot of matters that no one ever talks about.

Anyway - oh wise one - you were skeptical about the idea of data 'fading away'. So have a read of this:

http://www.larryjordan.biz/hard-disk-warning/

"Magnetic signals recorded on a hard disk are designed to be refreshed periodically. If your hard disks stay on, this happens automatically. However, if you store your projects to a removable hard drive, then store that hard drive on a shelf, unattached to a computer, those magnetic signals will fade over time… essentially, evaporating.

"So…in the interest of checking things out, simply reading every sector on a disk actually is preventative; if the controller within the disk detects any marginal data in either the servo tracks or the data bits recorded on the surface, the controller will automatically rewrite the data to the sector. If it cannot, this block is mapped out, again, automatically, and a substitute data block will be mapped in. All modern disks do this for you today. A simple read cycle of every sector or data block is all that is necessary."

So just turning the hard drive on every few months is completely insufficient...

In the long run the solution has to be The Cloud - every other solution is just too clunky.

[Issam abaza]

Interesting to read, however I would recommend LTO over the cloud services.