The end of the Hard Disks

[nightfire]

My take on that, as a sysadmin in a small privately owned company:

For normal computers, there is usually no reason NOT to have an SSD as a boot drive and for ordinary operations.
Especially recent notebook systems also profit from lower latencies of the M.2 PCIe based SSDs over SATA systems.

But in the Server section it is different. Here, especially for backup, HDDs still have a very valid place, due to:
- price per GB
- robustness in a power-off state

Even if a HDD would not spin up after a few years of non-powered storage, some data reconstruction lab like ontrak should be able to get to the data, with  the flash chips of a SSD i am not hat sure.
Also some big storage systems alleviate the disadvantages of HDDs with big controllers and caches, so available tech can still be used in a good manner, as long as the admins know their limits.

[CatalinaWOW]

I agree.  Right now lowest cost for large capacities come in disk drives.  And arguably reliability is higher.  But those who keep pointing this out are much like those who pointed out correctly that 24 inch CRTs were superior to the 14 inch and 17 inch LCD monitors which were the first affordable flat screens.  The comparably sized LCD screens were at first just not available and then higher cost.  But the time it took to flip those statistics was stunningly short.  I thought at the time it would be a decade.  It was more like two years. 

I suspect many will be surprised by how fast SSD takes over.  I am not ready to predict two years, but I wouldn't put money down against it.  And I would put money on it being less than a decade.  Once it happens those who want hard drives for whatever reason will be like the current folks who want Trinitron monitors.  Their reasons might well be valid, but they are searching in specialty markets and paying very high prices.

[NiHaoMike]

a 5 terabyte usb hdd is 50$ ...

Where did you get that good deal? PC Part Picker lists $95 for the cheapest 6TB drive. (There are no cheap 5TB drives listed.)

[Kjelt]

I'll switch to SSD for my bulk storage and backup needs.

As you could have read in other topics you do realize that the ssd needs to be powered on regularly in order to guarantee data integrity ?
So IMO not really suitable for long time storage as backup medium.

[Halcyon]

The best backup strategy is to backup often and keep data "moving". That means testing relatively frequently, re-writing old volumes, and migrating from media that is getting old.

You shouldn't back up your old files once and hope that they are still readable in 10 years time if you need to rely on the backup. With tape backup, you erases and re-wrote tapes quite regularly.

[Zenith]

well like others said, magnetic tapes still exist, even if its only for niche market, i believe we still can get them if we need to...

At one time tape around the early 90s, magnetic tape became an option in the consumer market, but HDD sizes rapidly overtook the capacity of affordable tape backup. It exists now as a professional backup medium where it has several advantages, such as being suitable for offsite storage, where it's hard to see HDDs or SSDs displacing it. For most of us, USB external HDDs are a very practical means of backup. I don't see that changing quickly.

In some niche markets such as telecomms, 1/2" tape survived years after it had died out everywhere else. They really couldn't cope with rapid change, and they were prepared to pay to have new 1/2" tape drives made in small volumes.

[Zenith]

The best backup strategy is to backup often and keep data "moving". That means testing relatively frequently, re-writing old volumes, and migrating from media that is getting old.

You shouldn't back up your old files once and hope that they are still readable in 10 years time if you need to rely on the backup. With tape backup, you erases and re-wrote tapes quite regularly.

Yes, there'd be a procedure of full backups, with partial backups in between, and there'd possibly be offsite storage as part of it. There'd almost certainly be a fireproof safe for the tapes. Most of the tapes would be reused fairly often. You might even be doing striped backups across more than one tape drive. All of this would need thought through procedures which were followed. It would depend on the data loss risk you were guarding against. For most of us, if the house burned down we'd have other worries than whether we had an off-site backup of our computer files, but a company would have to be able to cope with a fire.

Another risk was having a write-only tape drive.

[free_electron]

a 5 terabyte usb hdd is 50$ ...

Where did you get that good deal? PC Part Picker lists $95 for the cheapest 6TB drive. (There are no cheap 5TB drives listed.)

Western digital 5Tb USB enclosure. they come in yellow/red/orange/blue/black enclosures. They were 50$ on an amazon deal a couple of years ago when WD changed the cases to new style. I got one in every color. There is no adapter/converter inside ! so it is not a SATa with a sata<>usb bridge. The drive board has a usb connector. They are slow (5400rpm) but perfect for backup of photo/video footage.
I take video underwater and a 128Gig microsd fills quickly when you shoot in 4k. Came back from last vacation with 3+TB footage. a 4TB ssd costs an arm and a leg...

[free_electron]

for backup
- one copy is no copy
- two copies is half a copy
- three copies is still not a backup

Have two copies (besides the original) on different machines , preferably in different locations. It's not just the storage medium , it's also how to access the medium. I have it on tape ... anyone has a 9600bpi drive ? you think i am joking ? i have it backed up on (re)writable cd/dvd ... how many computers still have an optical drive ? i have it on usb stick... where the is that damn adapter to go from old usb to usb-c.
I have it on a nas... what if the motherboard in the nas dies ? are you sure that nas with that firmware will still be around ? are you certain you can access that drive from a regular computer ? oh, but it is using ext-3 (or whatever filesystem) ... yeah , in just a "slightly" modified version... and if they encrypted the drive and the motherboard died .. kiss the encryption key goodbye as it was stored in the TPM of that motherboard.

[Mechatrommer]

how many computers still have an optical drive ?

at least there are 3 here..

[CatalinaWOW]

Having an optical drive is only half the answer.  I was recently going through backups, recovering photographs from the early 2000s stored on DVD+R disks.  Reads were slow and about half of the DVDs were partially or totally unreadable.  I was about to write them off to corrosion or one of the other failure mechanisms these media have but on a lark decided to spend $35 on a new SATA optical drive.  Suddenly all the data was accessible.  At least long enough to move it to a more current media.  It turns out that both of the DVD readers in the machine dedicated to this purpose had degraded. 

I have kept a variety of storage devices, just in case.  I have several flavors of 5.25 inch floppies, a couple of 3.5 inch floppies, a couple of ZIP drives and a stack other things.  But if I was really serious about being able to use them I would have to perform active maintenance.  I don't care that much about data that old.

[james_s]

I'll switch to SSD for my bulk storage and backup needs.

As you could have read in other topics you do realize that the ssd needs to be powered on regularly in order to guarantee data integrity ?
So IMO not really suitable for long time storage as backup medium.

In my case my largest backup needs are not long term cold storage, the backup drives are powered up regularly and the backup is updated. I have not personally had any issues with data loss due to SSDs not being powered for extended periods but I suppose it's something to consider if I were going to archive something and not touch it for a long time.

[TimFox]

Having an optical drive is only half the answer.  I was recently going through backups, recovering photographs from the early 2000s stored on DVD+R disks.  Reads were slow and about half of the DVDs were partially or totally unreadable.  I was about to write them off to corrosion or one of the other failure mechanisms these media have but on a lark decided to spend $35 on a new SATA optical drive.  Suddenly all the data was accessible.  At least long enough to move it to a more current media.  It turns out that both of the DVD readers in the machine dedicated to this purpose had degraded. 

I have kept a variety of storage devices, just in case.  I have several flavors of 5.25 inch floppies, a couple of 3.5 inch floppies, a couple of ZIP drives and a stack other things.  But if I was really serious about being able to use them I would have to perform active maintenance.  I don't care that much about data that old.

I assume the problem with your old optical drives is degradation of the laser--how old were they?

[free_electron]

how many computers still have an optical drive ?

at least there are 3 here..

yes, old ones you bought 5 year ago. Go to a store and try to find a laptop with an optical drive. If you need a mac : good luck ..
As for dvd drives : if you never use them the lenses collect dust and a kind of haze develops over it. most lenses are polycarbonate.

I ditched all that stuff. floppies, optical disks , usb sticks...

Two nas boxes that mirror each other , in different geographical locations, unencrypted drives , standard EXT-2 format ,  clone in the nas + clone between nas) and an encrypted backup subset stored at a cloud provider.
cloning is not automatic. we don't want a good file to be overwritten by a corrupted newer version of the file. I use a tool called ViceVersa and keep multiple versions (similar to apple timemachine. Viceversa has very fine control of the archiving options).

Verified i can pull a drive, hook it to a computer esata (or usb<>sata) port and access it without problems. No jbod or raid , that too is nothing but trouble in case of a disaster. Often you need the exact raid controller to be able to rebuild. Fat good that stack of drives does you if the disk structure is unreadable due to controller differences.

[james_s]

yes, old ones you bought 5 year ago. Go to a store and try to find a laptop with an optical drive. If you need a mac : good luck ..
As for dvd drives : if you never use them the lenses collect dust and a kind of haze develops over it. most lenses are polycarbonate.

The drives aren't built in anymore but they're still around and they are readily available. My laptop doesn't have a built in optical drive but an external one was one of the first accessories I bought for it. You may not use them but they are still widely used, most people I know own at least one. I use mine regularly, and I use USB keys often.

[SiliconWizard]

The best backup strategy is to backup often and keep data "moving". That means testing relatively frequently, re-writing old volumes, and migrating from media that is getting old.

You shouldn't back up your old files once and hope that they are still readable in 10 years time if you need to rely on the backup. With tape backup, you erases and re-wrote tapes quite regularly.

I agree with that. The best long-term strategy for data retention is... replication. (I know I already said that, but that's incidentally how life works.)
Which is a more workable scheme if the storage media are cheap.

[tooki]

yes, old ones you bought 5 year ago. Go to a store and try to find a laptop with an optical drive. If you need a mac : good luck ..

Good luck finding a Windows laptop with an optical drive, either. It doesn’t matter though: whether Mac, Windows, or Linux, just get a $40 external DVD-RW drive that plugs in with USB.

[Mechatrommer]

how many computers still have an optical drive ?

at least there are 3 here..

yes, old ones you bought 5 year ago.

wrong! 10+ years ago.

Go to a store and try to find a laptop with an optical drive. If you need a mac : good luck ..

laptop (for work) is only for new kids on the block. they are only for presentation (connecting to projector) or if i have to go outstation for weeks or months.

As for dvd drives : if you never use them the lenses collect dust and a kind of haze develops over it. most lenses are polycarbonate.

thats why the 3 machines i disconnect the power and sata cables to save the laser diode's useful life. only to connect them when i have cd/dvd to read/write. i have more damaged dvd drive that i learnt the fact the hardway from. the reason i keep and try to save them as long as i can is because i still have bunches of cd/dvd around, and full boxes of empty dvdr.

The drives aren't built in anymore but they're still around and they are readily available. My laptop doesn't have a built in optical drive but an external one was one of the first accessories I bought for it. You may not use them but they are still widely used, most people I know own at least one. I use mine regularly, and I use USB keys often.

ditto.. i have one for the wifey's laptop. i dont use it anymore as we can transfer data or install OS from USB stick nowadays.

[free_electron]

yes, old ones you bought 5 year ago. Go to a store and try to find a laptop with an optical drive. If you need a mac : good luck ..

Good luck finding a Windows laptop with an optical drive, either. It doesn’t matter though: whether Mac, Windows, or Linux, just get a $40 external DVD-RW drive that plugs in with USB.

one more thing to carry, can't find when needed , broken when needed ... and how much longer will that be around ? who still buys recordable disks ? the storage capacity is too small these days. blu ray writer, maybe ..
But the quality of the optical media has gone to snot... i have Startrax CD . double speed, written on an original Kodak CD writer (external ,big machine on a SCIS card ) size of a VCR . They are still perfectly readable. They are the solid gold disks (no organic layer )
The stuff they sell now ? leave it on your desk in the sun for a week and it's a coaster ...

[free_electron]

laptop (for work) is only for new kids on the block. they are only for presentation (connecting to projector) or if i have to go outstation for weeks or months.

i don't have desktops anymore. I Buy used z-books. True mobile workstations. Shove em in a dock and done. if i need to relocate : grab the machine and go.

The drives aren't built in anymore but they're still around and they are readily available. My laptop doesn't have a built in optical drive but an external one was one of the first accessories I bought for it. You may not use them but they are still widely used, most people I know own at least one. I use mine regularly, and I use USB keys often.

i have not loaded a cd or dvd or bluray in at least 5 years. i tossed them all out . movies are streaming only ( i don't really buy movies. stream when it is included in prime or netflix. i only own a few like the back to the future trilogy ). Software is download only these days and has been for a long time. the rest are old files that i moved off optical and into the nas.
I have not seen an optical disk in years. I keep a few like OS installation disks if needed for some test equipment like logic analysers. once the OS is running on those : network and pull the rest off the nas. i don;t have any machines that cannot network. i have one older scope that uses a floppy drive but i never save there anyway.

usb keys ... i've lost so many , stepped on em , crushed them ... They are always crappy construction. The little eyelets break. They seem to be designed in such a way that you will lose them. I had one that was shaped like a steel house key. Put on your keyring . Worked great ! . Till one day it stopped working .. nothing .. i look in the connector end : the guts had fallen out. the usb drive was a plastic block that was inserted through the usb opening. only the outer shell was there. contacts , circuit board and chips  were gone..

drop the file(s) on a shared public thing like dropbox or google drive and move on. Not only that but usb sticks these days can be infected with bootloaders and other nasties , or be fake and designed to fry the computer.
At least iwth shared folders you can write-protect those.

[Mechatrommer]

I saved all sw installers in ext hdd so i can do complete os+sw's installation offline independent of anything.. and because i maintain few pc's, even friends' that ask for help. if you like me you'll know online sw installation is a hassle esp if many of them. And i dont use any usb key, never! i use patch.exe 

[Haenk]

It turns out that both of the DVD readers in the machine dedicated to this purpose had degraded. 

Unlikely.
However the venting fans of the case often pull (unfiltered) air through the drives, leaving dust and whatever on the lenses, leading to the mentioned read errors.

[tooki]

usb keys ... i've lost so many , stepped on em , crushed them ... They are always crappy construction. The little eyelets break. They seem to be designed in such a way that you will lose them. I had one that was shaped like a steel house key. Put on your keyring . Worked great ! . Till one day it stopped working .. nothing .. i look in the connector end : the guts had fallen out. the usb drive was a plastic block that was inserted through the usb opening. only the outer shell was there. contacts , circuit board and chips  were gone..

During my stint as a computer technician, I learned something about users: they tend to fall into one of two groups, those who are really gentle on their gadgets, and those who are really hard on them. Sounds to me like you fall more into the latter group!

(I’m more in the first group, and I’ve never had a flash drive get lost, fail or break.)

Also, this is part of why broadcast video gear is so expensive: it’s all built to handle the latter group’s style of handling without failing. :p

[tooki]

one more thing to carry, can't find when needed , broken when needed ... and how much longer will that be around ?

Given that USB floppy drives are still available, LONG after becoming obsolete, I expect that USB optical drives will be available for quite some time yet. It’s likely that they’ll stop making DVD drives (much the way we don’t make CD-only data drives any more), so probably they’ll just be $50 blu-ray drives with DVD and CD backward-compatibility.

I prefer the external drives: why schlep an internal drive with me everywhere for the 1 time in two years I might need it? It’s added weight, and would represent the only mechanical component in the machine other than the CPU fan.

[tooki]

thats why the 3 machines i disconnect the power and sata cables to save the laser diode's useful life. only to connect them when i have cd/dvd to read/write. i have more damaged dvd drive that i learnt the fact the hardway from. the reason i keep and try to save them as long as i can is because i still have bunches of cd/dvd around, and full boxes of empty dvdr.

That makes literally no sense. The laser isn’t sitting there turned on all day long: it turns on when closing the drive tray triggers it to check for a disc. And in fact, it’s not one laser: in a DVD drive, there is one IR laser for reading/burning CDs, and a red one for DVDs. (In a blu-ray drive, there’s a third blue laser.) Only one laser is ever on at one time, and it’s off when idle.

As haenk said, a far more likely explanation for drive degradation is dust ingestion, which is not related to whether it’s powered up. An external drive won’t suffer that problem.