The end of the Hard Disks

[Zoli]

...
Be really careful with optical media for long-term storage. In a place I used to work, we would have old archives, first on CD, then DVD and eventually Bluray. I experienced problems which ranged from discs being rendered totally unreadable, to certain sectors being unreadable (which is no good for archive files unless there is redundancy built-into the file). And we're talking disks that ranged from 10 to only a few years old.

It was a standard office-type set up, but after hours, the air conditioning would shut off. I'm not sure whether that contributed significantly to the humidity and therefore accelerated the damage to the discs or not?
...

That's typical for the dye-based disks; however, the M-disks are based on different technology. I would place them in similar category like the mass-produced/printed disks for longevity.

...
The moral of the story is test and rotate your backups often.

That's absolutely true for all the backup media types.

[David Hess]

Just for kicks I broke out some old DVDs that that I burned 18 years ago and read them with both drives without problems.

[coppercone2]

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/08/02/1837229/the-dirty-carbon-secret-behind-solid-state-memory-drives

[Mechatrommer]

a little bit too duplicated...

Looks like HDDs are greener than SSDs:
The Dirty Carbon Secret Behind Solid State Memory Drives (https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/the-dirty-carbon-secret-behind-solid-state-memory-drives)

doesnt that mean more trees can breath on co2 and in return produce more o2 for us to breath on, and then we can multiply more until the earth is overcrowded, and then we'll either need to move to mars or kill each other to rebalance the population count.

[BruceEckel]

Clicking sound from a HDD is so called “Click of death” because that means the Hard drive is now broken and must be repaired or replaced.

HDD and SSD can and do fail suddenly. I have had a 1TB external drive fail on me like this, it showed no prior signs of damage before it suddenly developed click of death.

[tooki]

Lemme fix that for you:

Clicking sound from a HDD is so called “Click of death” because that means the Hard drive is now broken and must be repaired or replaced.

For all intents and purposes, hard disks cannot be repaired.

HDD and SSD can and do fail suddenly. I have had a 1TB external drive fail on me like this, it showed no prior signs of damage before it suddenly developed click of death.

For the sake of data integrity and avoiding failures, I replace them long before they start clicking, by using SMART to identify issues. Not all failures can be predicted, but some SMART parameters (or rapid changes in them) are strong predictors of imminent failure.

[Mechatrommer]

Lemme fix that for you:

Clicking sound from a HDD is so called “Click of death” because that means the Hard drive is now broken and must be repaired or replaced.

For all intents and purposes, hard disks cannot be repaired.

it depends, sometime it can...

For the sake of data integrity and avoiding failures, I replace them long before they start clicking, by using SMART to identify issues. Not all failures can be predicted, but some SMART parameters (or rapid changes in them) are strong predictors of imminent failure.

power glitch can cause some SMART parm to be marked. and disk clone will clone the SMART parm as well, so a marked SMART value as bad, can be all perfect green again. i set 10 years as limit, or if i start to hear weird sound, i dont usually remember to check SMART values.

[Kjelt]

For all intents and purposes, hard disks cannot be repaired.

Repair as in you continue using it as a normal hdd no, but to get the data back you can some times.

If the error is in the drive controller board you can buy a donor hdd and replace one rom from the original to the donor board and swap them.
Example


Sometimes it is as simple as blown resistors/fuse/diode ofcourse you have to ask what caused this but hey if it works for a couple of hours that is enough to get the data off it.
Example


If it is a mechanical issue inside the drive then you better hire a pro company esp with current helium filled disks.
So best advice: back everything up !

[tooki]

Lemme fix that for you:

Clicking sound from a HDD is so called “Click of death” because that means the Hard drive is now broken and must be repaired or replaced.

For all intents and purposes, hard disks cannot be repaired.

it depends, sometime it can...

A band-aid fix to recover data is NOT A REPAIR, and that video even says so.

power glitch can cause some SMART parm to be marked.

Not the ones that matter in regard to predicting failure.

and disk clone will clone the SMART parm as well,

Complete nonsense.

so a marked SMART value as bad, can be all perfect green again.

Certain test logs have a limited number of entries, such that the oldest tests get cycles out.

Not the important stuff though.

[tooki]

For all intents and purposes, hard disks cannot be repaired.

Repair as in you continue using it as a normal hdd no, but to get the data back you can some times.

If the error is in the drive controller board you can buy a donor hdd and replace one rom from the original to the donor board and swap them.
Example


Sometimes it is as simple as blown resistors/fuse/diode ofcourse you have to ask what caused this but hey if it works for a couple of hours that is enough to get the data off it.
Example


If it is a mechanical issue inside the drive then you better hire a pro company esp with current helium filled disks.
So best advice: back everything up !

I said “for all intents and purposes”, not “under all circumstances without exception”. Data recovery (as a result of a failure to back up properly) is the ONLY situation where any work on a failed or failing hard drive makes sense, and then the purpose is not to restore it regular use. In any situation other than data recovery, the labor cost of a repair attempt will exceed the cost of replacing the drive with a new one.

[james_s]

When I was a broke teenager somebody gave me a pair of dead 1GB hard drives, quite large by the standards of the day. I swapped the PCB from one onto the other and got one of the drives working and used it for several years. I also repaired a 8GB SCSI drive once that had a drink spilled on the computer while it was running, my friend had his whole music collection on it. Replacing one of the mosfets driving the spindle motor fixed it and he was still using it when I lost touch with him a few years later. That latter could be called data recovery, the former was a result of poverty and having more time than money.

[Kjelt]

I said “for all intents and purposes”, not “under all circumstances without exception”. Data recovery (as a result of a failure to back up properly) is the ONLY situation where any work on a failed or failing hard drive makes sense, and then the purpose is not to restore it regular use. In any situation other than data recovery, the labor cost of a repair attempt will exceed the cost of replacing the drive with a new one.

Well as a non native english speaker I do count "backup of data" as a valid purpose to repair a hdd, other cases indeed it makes no economical sense also regarding reliability etc.
But as far as reliability goes, then the same goes for instance any electrical device having suffered severe ESD due to lightning or whatever and debatable also any T&M device that has suffered damaged on its measurements inputs, at least if you need the data to be exact and reliable, unless done properly , recalibrated and certified by the manufacturer.

[tooki]

I said “for all intents and purposes”, not “under all circumstances without exception”. Data recovery (as a result of a failure to back up properly) is the ONLY situation where any work on a failed or failing hard drive makes sense, and then the purpose is not to restore it regular use. In any situation other than data recovery, the labor cost of a repair attempt will exceed the cost of replacing the drive with a new one.

Well as a non native english speaker I do count "backup of data" as a valid purpose to repair a hdd, other cases indeed it makes no economical sense also regarding reliability etc.

To me, as a native English speaker, "repair" has the connotation of a durable repair intended to return the item to regular service. Otherwise, we'd call it a "temporary repair", temporary fix", etc.

(FYI, "backup" specifically means making an extra preventative copy in advance to protect against data loss. Copying data off after drive failure is data recovery, the exact opposite of backing up.)

Anything involving anyone but the manufacturer or manufacturer-authorized data recovery provider opening the drive (as in the reply above yours) is, given the fickle nature of HDD mechanisms, inherently a quick-and-dirty fix, not a lasting repair, since letting non-cleanroom air into the drive is asking for trouble.

But as far as reliability goes, then the same goes for instance any electrical device having suffered severe ESD due to lightning or whatever and debatable also any T&M device that has suffered damaged on its measurements inputs, at least if you need the data to be exact and reliable, unless done properly , recalibrated and certified by the manufacturer.

That's comparing apples to oranges. Or apples to pencil erasers. Completely irrelevant. We're not talking about drives that have failed due to abuse. The issue is that non-abused hard disks will just... fail. And almost all of the time, it's mechanical failure.

[Kjelt]

True. They can fail as anything mechanical, electric , pneumatic etc can fail.
I don't think harddrives are particular worse if taken care of (used) properly.
In datacenters using enterprise grade harddisks that are 24/7 on in temperature and humidity controlled environment 99% if not higher of the harddisks are preventively changed after three or four years without any failure.
Personally from the 74 harddisks I ever owned I have one fail and one has a SMART entry which is not good. A lot of these harddisks were never 24/7 on, were moved, shaken, temperature cycles, lots of power on/off cycles etc.

You probably know the backblaze reports, they reveal that the AFR of hdds is equal to ssds now who had put their money on that ?

https://www.dpreview.com/news/7921185885/backblaze-reveals-failure-rates-for-hard-drives-in-2021-releases-an-ssd-report-for-the-first-time

[CatalinaWOW]

True. They can fail as anything mechanical, electric , pneumatic etc can fail.
I don't think harddrives are particular worse if taken care of (used) properly.
In datacenters using enterprise grade harddisks that are 24/7 on in temperature and humidity controlled environment 99% if not higher of the harddisks are preventively changed after three or four years without any failure.
Personally from the 74 harddisks I ever owned I have one fail and one has a SMART entry which is not good. A lot of these harddisks were never 24/7 on, were moved, shaken, temperature cycles, lots of power on/off cycles etc.

You probably know the backblaze reports, they reveal that the AFR of hdds is equal to ssds now who had put their money on that ?

https://www.dpreview.com/news/7921185885/backblaze-reveals-failure-rates-for-hard-drives-in-2021-releases-an-ssd-report-for-the-first-time

I agree that hard drive reliability is not a particular cause for concern, but my personal experience has been significantly worse than what you report.  My total quantity is smaller, though I don't have an exact count.  It is in the 30-40 range.  And I have had two hard failures, one drive that developed start-up reliability failures and one that got a SMART entry and was losing/corrupting data.  Perhaps not surprisingly the failures have occurred in drives 7-12 years old.  New enough to be relatively high capacity with tight tolerances and less margins and old enough to have seen significant use.  The failure rate has been high enough to keep me reminded of the importance of backups and fortunately I haven't lost any meaningful data for a couple of decades. 

I do also have to modify that last statement.   As the total amount of stored material has increased I have lost data - not because it wasn't on the drives, but because I can't locate it.  I know this happens because I have found some of it, sometimes years after the need.

[Kjelt]

Perhaps not surprisingly the failures have occurred in drives 7-12 years old.  New enough to be relatively high capacity with tight tolerances and less margins and old enough to have seen significant use. 

Check the smart values, probably high start stop count?
I only buy enterprise grade for my NASses and minimize the power cycles for the 24/7 on devices. The others I just turn on when I need them.
This costs energy for standby but does prolong the life , but perhaps that is just a believe of mine. Anyway I was planning to also preventively replace my 24/7 hdds and nas every 4 years but due to the bad economy and relatively low feature new synology nasses (still no 10Gb NIC) I kept waiting. 46000+ hours not bad and still going strong.