When do PATA drives change into ticking time bombs ??

[systemBuilder]

Our art teacher just lost 2 of her disk drives which she hadn't accessed in years, they were both about 10 years old. At what age do you look at a disk drive and see a ticking time bomb? I am refurbishing the laptops at our house and might upgrade some drives as part of my preventive maintenance procedures, based on the month and year of manufacture, as a precaution (and to allow larger file storage).

I have read that SSD drives actually don't store data for very long when they are not being used (as little as 2 years, which was shocking), so I am conficted about whether SSD drives are a good idea or whether NOS / recent PATA drives (2010 or later) would be better.

[Brad]

After three years I would recommend replacing any hard drive, not just PATA hard drives, that contains anything that could be important.

A proper implemented backup strategy is essential to preserve any data.

I have no experience regarding failure rates based on time.

Brad

[dr_st]

A hard drive is a ticking time-bomb from the day it's manufactured.

However, the variance in failure time is larger than the mean, so I don't see any point in proactive replacement of drives.

What I do is:

1) Make sure I have everything important backed up regularly
2) Monitor the hard drive health and replace it whenever it starts degrading (e.g., bad sectors spreading, SMART tests failing).

Of course if it's under warranty, I will replace it even if there is a single bad sector. Otherwise I will wait to see that they actually start spreading.

It is rare that the drive dies completely and instantly. Usually only happens if it's dropped or otherwise subject to physical damage. Drives that die of old age usually do it slowly, which gives you plenty of time to notice and react.

[loyukfai]

Do you write for tabloids...? The subject is... so sensational.

For instance, why are you discriminating against PATA...? Even if SATA is your new lover, you shouldn't ditch PATA simply because it's old...

Seriously, it's IMO that you should ask how to implement a "sane" backup policy for an "average" user instead.

Cheers.

[FTC]

Hi, given the rate at which new drives get increased capacity I would say, keep a good backups and replace disks when they become 'ridiculously small'.. for the times. At that time saving the information in that drive to another one will be easy and probably mantaining the old gear not worth the physical space it uses. For instance, I tend today to 'jubilate' all hard drives smaller than 60GBs. They are normally close to 8-10 years already and they have become unpractical and dangerous to mantain.

[loyukfai]

Agree. Same can be said for flash and optical storage medium.

Afraid many people who thought burning their collections to CD-R was a great backup idea would be distraught when they found out those can't be read 10-year later.

The old photos may turn yellow, but at least they're still there.

Cheers.

[Raceboy]

What would be the best method of storing information? I mean, affordable by average joe user like me, not super-expensive options like for big corporations etc.

I have bought a lightly used (~1 year) 320 GB 2.5" SATA HDD in USB enclosure and backed up all the data there. Keeping it dry, secure (no high G shocks) should not wear the drive as it is working rather seldom (maybe once or twice per month) and the mechanics shouldn't wear.

Of course, some SCSI drives would probably be with longest lifetime and I still have some SCSI controller cards, maybe some valuable information should be backed up there?

Opinions?

[dr_st]

What would be the best method of storing information?

The best method would be storing it in several places, preferably in several physical locations.

[pianowizard]

I have bought a lightly used (~1 year) 320 GB 2.5" SATA HDD in USB enclosure and backed up all the data there. Keeping it dry, secure (no high G shocks) should not wear the drive as it is working rather seldom (maybe once or twice per month) and the mechanics shouldn't wear.

I have 3 to 4 copies of most of my files on different hard drives (some external some internal), although for some older files that I will probably never access, I have only 2 copies. If I were you, I would have one more backup copy of your important files. Have you looked into cloud storage? Uploading to the cloud can be quite slow, but since you currently have only one backup copy and you apparently don't want to spend more money on another drive, you may want to look into getting a free cloud storage account. I got two 50GB box.com accounts for free and perhaps you can get a free account as well.

[Unknown_K]

They don't. It depends on how well the drive was made and how you store it. As far as a laptop IDE I have an 80MB (yes MB) 2.5" laptop drive that was OEM in an Amiga 1200 (early 1990's) that still works 100% (sits in a drawer in my cool dry basement since I use something bigger for the last decade). I have snagged old thinkpads that have seen a decade of negelect and had the drives boot up fine. Old drives used low RPM and never got that hot. New drives on the other hand bake themselves to death inside of very hot running laptops so I expect they will die sooner.