Pancakes of doom!
Oh dear lord, don't give me nightmares! Those things could die on the shelf!
Oddly enough that's still a reality for all platter drives... they fail via age, use is irrelevant. But, it does generally take a bit longer than those old pancakes did! XD
I've never seen that happen. I still have some good old 80MB (YES, MEGABYTE!) hard drives from the good old days. I just plugged one of them in a few months ago and it was fine. Haven't used the thing since the 90's and it fired right up.
If the device has ball bearing supported platters, yes... that's largely true. Unless the lubricant in the bearings dries out they'll live in effect forever. But modern drives don't use that tech. I'm not sure what they use, but I've seen that bearing fail just sitting there given enough time. That time is measured in decades, but they do still go bad.
Well yeah, me too, but hard drives can still store data for long amounts of time without having to worry about the data. I personally keep my long term storage drives for 10 years before I replace them. I currently have approximately 50TB worth of data in long term storage right now.
If you're using server rated drives they've all got 10 year MTBF ratings so that's not unreasonable. The thing is... the SSDs have that too. Though yeah, it's much cheaper to get large capacity on a platter.
No LOL. I'm using WD external HDDs. The difference is they're literally just on the shelf. They're not plugged in or turned on. When I first get them I fire them up and let them run through some tests for a few days, then I fill them up and put them on the shelf for 10 years, only accessing the data very rarely (like once a year or so). Been doing this for 20 odd years now and I've never had a failure.
Still have mine from '96, that drive and I had many great time...ahhh Quake and the 3DFX as well.
Shew, I wish I could say the same. Our forensics side maintains ability to read IDE, SCSI, SATA, SAS, and about 20 other proprietary and ancient connection types.
That's what this thing is for: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-5-25-INCH-Converter-Activity-USB-DS12/dp/B0758RP5V8
I've seen them but honestly who, even on old an old PC, doesn't have SATA now? I don't touch out of support software, like XP or 9x. If someone needs access to that I will push them to someone else. Not going to buy up a bunch of hardware I'll never use.
Probably two to three times a year someone shows up that needs data off ancient hardware. It's not about support, it's about being able to read stuff off those old disks. I didn't buy my connector for the IDE connections, they just sort of came along for the ride because mine also does SATA. But even if I didn't, the cable is so cheap that having the tool handy is worth it to me. Because shops tend to do what you're doing.
You need to become well known in your area for working on vintage hardware. I work on old stuff all the time. Most of my clients who bring in old stuff like that don't need ongoing support. They usually just want help getting it working again and once it does they tend to last years and years before something else breaks. Hardware was made much better quality back then.
