Re: [ARSCLIST] "hard drive on a shelf"

[Steven Smolian <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>]

We once had a posting to this list by someone who was involved with the 
manufaturing and/or maintainence of stand alone hard drives.  His concern 
was that the lubrcants would harden or otherwise change and could not be 
restored.

Steve Smolian



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2007 4:36 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] "hard drive on a shelf"


> On 17/07/07, Jeffrey Kane wrote:
>
> > Humidity is the enemy more than temperature. Corresponding anti-static
> > measures are vital. A 'dry cabinet' will be essential. Also, contrary
> > to film and tape storage, you want the temperature to be warmer.
> > Thanks to RoHS, tin pest is a distant but real concern especially
> > given that you intend to shelf store the drives. Below 13c/55F, tin
> > changes structure. This change can cause solder joints to fail.
> >
> > I am, of course, sidestepping discussion of why using HDDs for
> > archival storage is a bad idea.
> I think the most likely thing to fail on a hard drive long term is
> capacitors on the circuit board.
>
> But more likely is that, when the drive is brought out of its cupboard
> 25 years later, there will be no equipment to connect it to and no
> operating system that can read the file format. Try getting data off a
> 25 year old cp/m drive today.
>
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> --
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> 4:39 PM