QOTW:Do you still use mechanical storage?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm not either, but I'm certainly no more trusting of mechanical drives than SSDs. Maybe less trusting of mechanical.

For files I can't afford to use, backup, backup, backup. How I do it varies. RAID (mirroring on some machines, RAID 5 on others) gives me some resilience but even then, backup. I see RAID as an adjunct to backup, never an alternative or replacement for backup. RAID, for me, is about trying to ensure a failure doesn't take my data out when I need it, for tight deadlines. Backups, or in some cases, what I call "archiving" is for making sure I don't lose important stuff. My definition of the difference is I "backup" data that changes frequently, but archive stuff that doesn't. For example, I "archive" masters of photo, video and audio files, typically onto MO or PD drives, due to media longevity. I backup files (or more accurately, drives or directories) that change regularly, onto more transient media.

Oh, and I always have several copies of "archived" data.

SSDs have data retention problems over time,in a powered down state, especially compared to magnetic media such as HDDs and tape. The last can survive for years. BTW,have you looked at MDISC??

[ddg3595]

Both my boxes run three mechanical hard drives each (two 4TB and one 6TB). It's all about storage capacity, and SSDs are not there yet.

[TriCyclops]

I have 2TB Seagate for media backup

[matts-uk]

I'm not either, but I'm certainly no more trusting of mechanical drives than SSDs. Maybe less trusting of mechanical.

SSDs have a finite write cycle and when they fail, they fail catastrophically and without warning. Based on my experience with customer systems, I won't trust my own important data to SSD. Electro-mechanical HDDs may be slow and clunky but more often than not provide some warning of impending failure. Providing they are still spinning there is usually some potential for complete or partial recovery.

For files I can't afford to use, backup, backup, backup.

<-This. Before starting my IT workshop I was a jobbing '3rd line' freelancer for 15 years or so. I worked purely on referral and many of my customers found me after suffering some IT disaster beyond the skills of their in-house IT. Backups can be insidious. Many people are well practised making them but far fewer have had to resort to them beyond ad-hoc file retrieval. The majority of those clients were running backups that proved partially or wholly inaccessible. The 'quality' of a recovery often came down to 'backup density.' The more backup copies available the less likely it is they will all be unusable. The one I remember was spending a week restoring 43 available tapes to find only two were usable.

How I do it varies. RAID (mirroring on some machines, RAID 5 on others) gives me some resilience but even then, backup. I see RAID as an adjunct to backup, never an alternative or replacement for backup.

RAID provides some resilience to physical disk failure. RAID provides no resilience to logical failure. Logical failures include file-system corruption, accidental and malicious deletions etc. The cost of RAID is complexity, with the additional risk of array failure.

RAID, for me, is about trying to ensure a failure doesn't take my data out when I need it, for tight deadlines. Backups, or in some cases, what I call "archiving" is for making sure I don't lose important stuff. My definition of the difference is I "backup" data that changes frequently, but archive stuff that doesn't. For example, I "archive" masters of photo, video and audio files, typically onto MO or PD drives, due to media longevity. I backup files (or more accurately, drives or directories) that change regularly, onto more transient media.

When I started in the industry (late 80s) 'grandfather, father, son' ruled the roost - Tapes were cheap and disk space expensive. My personal view is 'offline' backups and archives have been rendered obsolete by modern data volumes and the reversal of the cost model - Disk space is now much cheaper than managing backup devices. These days I talk about near line, mid line and far line, which refers to restoration times and locality - the 'distance' from recovery.

To answer the original question. My workstations and laptops are fitted with SSDs and just enough scratch space to force saving persistent data to the network. Network storage is spread around several 'spinning rust' RAID1 and RAID5 NAS units. I am slowly retiring the mirrors as they are becoming cost inefficient. The large number of small files are synchronised to the Cloud with automatic versioning. The small number of large files get duplicated to an off-site but physically accessible NAS, if they are important. Network storage media is pro-actively replaced when it reaches 5 years.

Having to adjust to domestic and micro-business customers has been 'interesting.' The big hurdle is a lack of patience and will to make and monitor an effective backup. Followed very closely by not wanting to spend any money on it. Spends £2K on laptop, won't spend £100 on backing it up. Everyone's fault but theirs when they lose stuff (!)

I don't doubt that you (Saracen999) and the rest of the Hexus massive are well covered.

[IAmATeaf]

I don’t think I’ll be dropping mech drives unless SSDs actually replace them. Have 4 6Tb drives in my NAS, 2 2Tb drives in my CCTV rig and have various 1 and 1.5 Tb drives in a few desktops in the house.

All desktops/laptops/servers do all have an SSD as the boot/OS drive but haven’t really given SSDs much more consideration beyond that.

[Spud1]

I do, because of cost int he past - but now I would just buy SSDs...not as I am richer, but because the prices have plummeted since i last bought a mechanical drive 3 years ago.

I use mine only for data storage or for games that dont have stringent performance requirements.

[Tunnah]

Ya I hate streaming so store most my movies locally, and 4K are like 60gb, so won't be getting rid of spinners any time soon

[Iota]

Nope, I don't miss the noise.

The only thing I would consider is maybe a NAS + mechanical drives.

[DanceswithUnix]

SSDs have data retention problems over time,in a powered down state, especially compared to magnetic media such as HDDs and tape. The last can survive for years. BTW,have you looked at MDISC??

If he is using MO drives, I think he has retention over time covered.

I have wondered if the up-coming laser assisted hard drives will have decent retention times, given they seem to use a similar principle to the old MO drives.

I have quite a lot of data on old CDs. Most of it I don't actually care about any more, but trying to get some old photos back the other day they all seemed to work fine after a couple of decades. ISTR being told they don't last more than a few years as well, but temperature and humidity are important with these things.


I've just started playing with trying to build a single PC Ceph storage array using some old hard 1TB drives to test. That's completely against how you are supposed to make a Ceph system, but I'm not fussed about data availability just resilience against drive failure and ability to snapshot against accidental deletion. If it works, I shall shuck some drives and build a proper system.

[adidan]

SSDs have data retention problems over time,in a powered down state, especially compared to magnetic media such as HDDs and tape. The last can survive for years. BTW,have you looked at MDISC??

I always thought this and yet i've not had one SSD die on me or lose data and yet i've had several HDDs do that to me.

Hell I still have a working Crucial M4 which is getting on for ten years old, I have no HDD survive from then.

But that may be a numbers thing, I have owned more HDDs over the years. No doubt there's a type of use variable too. From the onset due to pricing they were never used as storage and left dormant to any degree, that's a more recent thing for me.

* Now awaits for SSDs to bork themselves to change my experience completely - tiz usually the way *

To be safe anything important I have on SSD and on two external HDDs.

[Saracen999]

SSDs have data retention problems over time,in a powered down state, especially compared to magnetic media such as HDDs and tape. The last can survive for years. BTW,have you looked at MDISC??

If by MDISC mean MiniDisc, then yes, but only for audio purposes.

If you mean something else, then it seems not.

I've been through lots of stuff. First tape drive was a 150MB cartridge not much smaller than a video cassette, and the drives were about a grand. That was, oh dunno, very late 80s. Also had Jumbo drives right through to SLR tape and DAT 1 to dat 4.

And, CD burners starting witha Yamaha drive and Personal Scribe software a £4000 combination, where CDR blaks were £15 each. And then DVD, zip, Jaz, Plasmon PD, various MO drives (3.5£ and 5.25" IIRC) and numerous others. But both my needs and interests tailed off about a decade ago.

[Saracen999]

...

Hell I still have a working Crucial M4 which is getting on for ten years old, I have no HDD survive from then.

...

Ditto on the Crucial M4, but I also have many HDs MUCH older than that. Most, though not all, were pretty high end SCSI, not consumer grade, but a few were the latter.

[ik9000]

If by MDISC mean MiniDisc, then yes, but only for audio purposes.

If you mean something else, then it seems not.

I've been through lots of stuff. First tape drive was a 150MB cartridge not much smaller than a video cassette, and the drives were about a grand. That was, oh dunno, very late 80s. Also had Jumbo drives right through to SLR tape and DAT 1 to dat 4.

And, CD burners starting witha Yamaha drive and Personal Scribe software a £4000 combination, where CDR blaks were £15 each. And then DVD, zip, Jaz, Plasmon PD, various MO drives (3.5£ and 5.25" IIRC) and numerous others. But both my needs and interests tailed off about a decade ago.

MDisc is a DVDR format that is stable for long term archiving, 100s of years stable. You need a burner that supports it, but they're not that expensive. I think there's a bluray version too, but that is expensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

[Saracen999]

MDisc is a DVDR format that is stable for long term archiving, 100s of years stable. You need a burner that supports it, but they're not that expensive. I think there's a bluray version too, but that is expensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

In that case, no. That one got past me.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If he is using MO drives, I think he has retention over time covered.

I have wondered if the up-coming laser assisted hard drives will have decent retention times, given they seem to use a similar principle to the old MO drives.

I have quite a lot of data on old CDs. Most of it I don't actually care about any more, but trying to get some old photos back the other day they all seemed to work fine after a couple of decades. ISTR being told they don't last more than a few years as well, but temperature and humidity are important with these things.


I've just started playing with trying to build a single PC Ceph storage array using some old hard 1TB drives to test. That's completely against how you are supposed to make a Ceph system, but I'm not fussed about data availability just resilience against drive failure and ability to snapshot against accidental deletion. If it works, I shall shuck some drives and build a proper system.

I was commenting on SSDs against normal HDDs. Pressed CDs can last a few decades if stored properly - the writeable ones can last less time,but it depends on the dye used,etc. The Taido Yuden ones,and those with a scratchproof surface seemed to have lasted longer.

I always thought this and yet i've not had one SSD die on me or lose data and yet i've had several HDDs do that to me.

Hell I still have a working Crucial M4 which is getting on for ten years old, I have no HDD survive from then.

But that may be a numbers thing, I have owned more HDDs over the years. No doubt there's a type of use variable too. From the onset due to pricing they were never used as storage and left dormant to any degree, that's a more recent thing for me.

* Now awaits for SSDs to bork themselves to change my experience completely - tiz usually the way *

To be safe anything important I have on SSD and on two external HDDs.

I was talking about data retention - flash storage can start to lose data,if its been in a non-powered state after a few years. HDDs and other forms of magnetics storage can last much longer given the right storage conditions.

If by MDISC mean MiniDisc, then yes, but only for audio purposes.

If you mean something else, then it seems not.

I've been through lots of stuff. First tape drive was a 150MB cartridge not much smaller than a video cassette, and the drives were about a grand. That was, oh dunno, very late 80s. Also had Jumbo drives right through to SLR tape and DAT 1 to dat 4.

And, CD burners starting witha Yamaha drive and Personal Scribe software a £4000 combination, where CDR blaks were £15 each. And then DVD, zip, Jaz, Plasmon PD, various MO drives (3.5£ and 5.25" IIRC) and numerous others. But both my needs and interests tailed off about a decade ago.

MDISC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

It is a form of archival DVD/Blu-ray which are designed to be extra durable,and the result is a disc which is more like a pressed one - they don't use an organic dye.

[DanceswithUnix]

I was commenting on SSDs against normal HDDs. Pressed CDs can last a few decades if stored properly - the writeable ones can last less time,but it depends on the dye used,etc. The Taido Yuden ones,and those with a scratchproof surface seemed to have lasted longer.

I have pressed CDs going back to the mid 80's, the writable CDs are comparatively young at about 20 years old. I have yet to see any degradation. I have had a lifetime of being told my data won't last, so I spread it around over multiple media types and re-burn onto new media occasionally but actually have been pleasantly surprised so far.

There was a scare with SSDs some time ago based on a JEDEC flash specification table of retention vs temperature that was misinterpreted by the media. Recently I powered up my old E350 laptop that, now Raspberry Pi boards have overtaken it for performance, hadn't been used in over 2 years (since I last changed jobs where I used it quite a lot). From the scare stories it shouldn't have booted. It worked fine.

I think it is fair to say that we don't know the retention properties of a bunch of electrons escaping a floating gate vs stability of the miniscule soft magnetic domains of a modern HDD, both media change in basic operation fast enough that how our even 5 year old devices fared isn't really relevant. Some platters have a lubricant coating which could be like treacle after a decade, then there are things like motor bearings that might not spin after lack of use, Helium gas escaping causing extra drag on the motors. On the flip side, QLC flash, *shudder*, enough said.

Long term storage ideally needs to be actively powered up with data scrubbers checking the integrity of the data and re-building around corruption and failing drives onto spare storage. Hence I said I was looking at a sort of private cloud using erasure coding Ceph which in theory at least should be able to do all that but really wants to be running on at least 3 computers, which is a faff.