You are one of the real gems of UKposts. No annoying background music or distracting jump cuts, just solid information backed with sources. Thank you.

Moral of the story? Back up your data in more than one format and in more than one place. And choose your storage medium based on the criticality of the data. Great video!

Suddenly, I feel the urgency to print out my pictures of happy gatherings, to be stored in good old-fashioned photo albums.

I recently pulled out a batch of old 5.25" floppies from the eighties. I was shocked to find most of them still work.

Re HDD life. Im a DC engineer for a US bank and we have a couple of Compaq ML370 servers running on their original 9.1GB 15,000rpm drives. Now 22 years old !.

I worked at the Met Office in the late 90s, They were storing archived meteorological data on magnetic tape which could be retrieved by a robotic system called COSMOS. There is a salt mine in Cheshire where government departments and banks etc store their computer backups underground given the stable geology and high security available.

This channel never fails to bring me back to the early 2000s

I happened on ExplainingComputers while researching this very topic and I became an instant fan. The information is clearly transmitted and the sharp sense of humor was like watching a great video that not only informs but entertains too. Thanks for the updated video!

I guess two of the pyramids at Gizeh are for backup only.

In the 2000s DVDs were amazing for data backup. You could get a 50 pack for a few bucks and each one had 4.7GB which was huge back then. Just imagine what a modern equivalent could hold if the capacity continued to scale

Excellent as usual. The data fade issue is there for tapes as well as oxide decay when the oxide layer no longer adheres to the mylar rendering the media unusable. Tape was also known for “print thru” where data one layer of the tape could affect the adjacent layer. Archive tapes used to be rewound once a year to prevent this problem.

You are answering questions that I have not considered asking. Fabulous level of detail here. Thank very much!

Good video. As far as data backup goes , I always subscribe to the 3-2-1 aproch :- Keep 3 copies On atleast 2 different types of media. 1. Of them stored off site. I guess you could count something like Google drive as the off site. As far as lifespan goes , i have VHS tapes that still viewable after 40+ years. the analogue nature of the data probably help. In that it dose not need to be bit perfect to still play.

Hello Chris. I have a deskstar hard drive from 2006. it has worked for more than 94,000 hours. and it still works today.

SSD can loose data if unpowered for more then a year. - Hope they explain in detail about this. I use one for back up that sits in a drawer.

Great video! I've been storing data on CDs, DVDs, and BR for decades (since the first 4X burners came out). I have a few tips for storage that you didn't mention: 1) I've found that it's important to store them in a dark place, or at least away from UV light, as it does degrade the plastic. It's much more noticeable on older discs, but it still has an effect on modern ones. This is a big one, and the easiest to counter, but I find a lot of people know stored them on a shelf where they got exposed to sunlight every day. None of theirs lasted. 2) High temperatures are also bad. Don't store them in the attic or anyplace where the sun really heats the room up. 3) It likely also helps to store them in a dry place. Everyone I know who lives in a humid environment had their optical discs fail when mine were fine. 4) I've read about a condition called "DVD rot" where the reflective layer develops spots or even holes. I haven't seen this happen to any of my discs myself, but I live in a mild climate and keep mine in an indoor closet. To protect against this, it can be helpful to store them inside a sealed Ziploc bag, or other superior airtight bag, or a vacuum seal bag. in other words, I would advice a consumer to store them in a box, in a closet or file cabinet, in a temperature controlled environment. That includes air conditioning if it gets warm. If it's a humid environment, or just a humid basement, then a dehumidifier may be in order, but that can be a pain.

One of best Internet teachers in the world

Only 6k subscribers left until we reach the 1 million mark!!! 🥺

Hey Chris.Great update to a very important topic. After your earlier video on this topic, I purchased an MDISC player and some MDISC DVR optical disks. They have proved to be a solid and reliable storage option, although the ones I bought only store 4.76 G at 4X speed. But when backing up important data, I am never in a hurry. It is also good you cleared up some confusion about SSD storage. I have always thought SSD's were less long term storage than HD's. But this video helps shed some light on that. After watching this video, I realized I need to power up some older 1.5 TB archive drives I haven't spun up in at least 2 years! It will be interesting to see if the data on them is still intact! Anyway, thanks for another super video! Take Good Care Chris.

This is a subject I've needed to take more seriously for a long time. I'd be devastated if I lost all my family photographs. You've helped me come up with a new strategy about what I should be doing with them. Thank you for taking the time to make such a helpful video.

My oldest drive (WD Elements, 1TB) has been running since 2009. No bad sectors yet.

Thank you! My husband and I always enjoy your videos! (We were JUST talking about this subject last week! Great timing!) We wish you continued success with your UKposts channels. 👍

Very useful info on a subject which I've not seen all in on place before. I have about twenty HDD's some over twenty years old that have been dormant for many years. I am going to have to spin up, check and backup any thing of interest. Also a growing collection of SSD's, seven at the moment, which I do power up every six months, but I was unaware of the fact it's best to leave them powered up for an hour or so to do some house keeping. Thanks for another really slick video.

Something really important about this topic is that hard drives tend to fail on a bathtub curve. That is, either very very early in life or well out of warranty. It's definitely not a very normal distribution. That's why Backblaze's data suggested most drives last over 6 years yet their average lifespan was less than 3. This definitely makes the numbers harder to reason about.

My CD from Uni back in 2000 luckily lasted for over 20 years. Its still readable but now backed up.

I have a considerable number of WD drives that are older than 5 years but it doesn't mean I completely trust them. That makes backups even more important.

In our constant search for true genius, stop here and look no further. Christopher Barnatt has mastered so many different aspects of modern computing, I honestly do not understand how he retains all of that information between his ears. ANOTHER BRILLIANT VIDEO, Christopher! So very valuable to all computer users!!

Dang m’dude. That was a great roundup! I don’t even know about m disc. And what’s worse, I don’t realize that all of my photos are at risk!!! Yikes!!! And thanks!!!!

A couple of years back I had to deal with some failing drives. So, after moving and duplicating data around for some weeks I kept getting intermittent issues. Tried both old and trusty drives and new ones, changed cables, changed sata ports... and finally decided to upgrade the power supply. It was all finally fixed with the power supply upgrade, and to my surprise all drives were fully functional, even the ones that previously failed to power on. But I did throw away half of my sata cables. Make sure to give your spinning rust enough power and connectors or cables seem to fail more often than the drives, in my experience.

Absolutely fantastic video Christopher. Thank you for these informative, easy to understand videos. I'm fascinated by Data Archival, particularly for family video tapes from childhood days etc. I've been wondering what is the best way to store this media to last over time and have been getting so many different answers. Your video was an excellent summary. I'll have to look into M-DISC and Archival Optical Media. Your method you suggested about preventing bit-rot by removing then re-writing data to Hard Disk Drives was invaluable. I've long been a believer in Hard Drives over SSD's for archival purposes after owning so many hard drives over the years and seeing their reliability even after sitting cold for years, the idea putting it all on an SSD and finding data is lost because it wasn't powered on terrifies me. Until I can get myself a system together to burn the important media onto archival discs, your method of re-writing data to HDD's on a reasonably regular basis to prevent bit-rot will be a fantastic short-term solution to ensure redundancy. I've found WD's RED NAS drives are fantastic for this purpose in my past experience. Their lower speeds and low heat-output has ensured a very low-failure rate for me. I can't recommend WD RED drives enough for those wanting simple archival drives, but as Christopher said - one must still be mindful of magnetic decay and have systems in place to be re-writing data regularly to ensure no bit-rot. Thank you for your videos, they are so so appreciated.

You are an absolute geek. And that's exactly why I keep watching your videos.

RAR archive format supports a special type of redundant data called the recovery record. Presence of recovery record makes an archive larger, but allows to repair it even in case of physical data damage due to disk failure or data loss of other kind, provided that the damage is not too severe. Such damage recovery can be done with Repair archive command. ZIP archive format does not support the recovery record. I have been using 2.5-inch external hard disks made by Toshiba since 2009. I bought two 250GB disks in 2009, then two 500GB disks in 2010, then two 1.5TB disks, then two 3TB disks, and, finally one 4TB disk two years ago. Yesterday I checked all data - it was perfect!

You taught me alot my man. I learned everything from you, and still learn. When i sobered up 3 years ago, i jumped into computer building. Never in my life I thought id know, all thnx to you im 3 years experience in Computer Science. I dont need an expensive college for that, i have you.

As always, very informative. It's great that you're taking the time to give us these appraisals as these help in deciding what methods and equipment to use. Thank you.

This will be a long comment, but I figure I have some personal observations that might offer a few data points. For context, I've been using and maintaining computers since I was young(early 1990s), own a significant personal collection of computers(and drives) dating from the mid 1990s to current, and work for a medium-sized organization as an IT hardware manager. Long term storage of data on HDDs is a bit of a mixed bag. I was able to retrieve a full disk image of an HDD I used in a computer I owned when I was in high school(about 1999 or so) and retrieve practically everything. I also bought a machine last year whose drive was replaced in 1998 and used up to around 1999-2000 and hadn't been touched since; that data was still intact. However, most drives I have from the late '90s to early '00s have also experienced mechanical or controller failures that have rendered them inoperable; I highly suspect most of them weren't stored all that well. Modern HDDs tend to be significantly longer-lived as long as they don't experience early mechanical failures. I have laptop HDDs that I purchased around 2008 that are still working perfectly; they have long since been moved to external enclosures but I've used them to archive software installers and some other data for the past ten years and I haven't had a problem(yet). I also have a couple of 4TB drives that have been in my primary desktop since 2014-2015 that are still going strong, but these are mostly serve as backups and aren't regularly accessed. On the professional side of things, hard drives are rapidly being phased out for SSDs in business PCs. I'll get into SSD failures later, but I have seen more HDD failures in an office environment(mostly laptops) than I have SSDs. I haven't had great luck with old floppy disks, especially if they haven't been kept in pristine condition. I still need to go through my old floppies, but on average half of them haven't really held up. Granted, this was with them being stored in bad conditions(in a box in an unfinished basement), but I typically didn't use floppies for backup purposes. Even in the 1990s I had the opinion that they were fragile, but as a perpetually broke high schooler I couldn't step up to a Zip drive(and most computers I was around didn't have them either). CDs are also a bit of a mixed bag and very susceptible to bad storage conditions. Spills, especially on writable optical media, can be disastrous. Scratches are also an issue, so make sure that individual discs are protected. Contrariwise, I have had great luck with SD cards and USB flash drives. This used to be my primary means of archiving data that I would use between multiple computers. I did have a 16GB SD card fail, but that was after years of heavy use to where the drive was falling apart. I've also seen used cards fail, though there's a chance that they were cheap knock-offs. I have a relatively unique ExpressCard flash drive that has about 15 years of hard use and it has held up quite well(despite some physical damage). I've also had great luck with SSDs. I purchased my first SSDs in 2011(used, no less) and they're still operational. Granted, I used them as OS drives and not for long term storage of data, but they have held up very well and are still perfectly usable. I had a 1TB Crucial unit that failed on me a while ago, but I bought it used and it could have been mistreated. From a professional standpoint I've seen very few failures of SSDs, especially in comparison to HDDs. Off the top of my head I'd say I've seen maybe 5-7 SSD failures total over a decade of working in IT, and most of those failures were with older laptops(like the first Ultrabooks). Even having great luck with some formats, I can't stress enough the importance of backing up your data. Even if you're like me and don't trust/like cloud storage and can't really do offsite backup, having a local file server with a RAID array or even just running a backup task to multiple drives in a single computer is a very good idea. Having an imperfect backup plan(and realizing where it's imperfect) is better than having no backup plan at all.

Thanks Chris. I didn't realise SSD's were so 'leaky' in a depowered state. One year isn't long (appreciate they're a bit better now, but still...). As many others have stated, it underlines the need for a well thought out data back-up routine. More ££ here for the vital tea and biscuits fund. All the best.

I still have a 1TB WD on one computer that says 117038 power hours on hours, or 13 years 131 days. It is showing smart warnings now with reallocated sectors upto 75% of it's maximum amount. It's not in use everything has been copied to an SSD but it's still powered up in the machine.

My vinyl records still reproduce quite well after 60 years

Well that was an excellent video ,thanks for taking the time to put it together. I'm now off on a journey to understand more about how SSDs work!

You really are a star Chris! Amazing that you've given such an in-depth, yet undertandable rundown of the various types of storage media in an 18 minute video, including older optical that everyone seems to have moved passed (though I certainly haven't) to the very latest solid state devices and everything in-between. Another truly amazing and v-useful video. I do enjoy tuning into your weekly vids!!

Thanks Chris 🙂 I have a 128GB Crucial M4 SSD that was in fairly regular use for over six years...I believe it still has around 50% of its useful life remaining. It's an older MLC unit but I've tried to avoid QLC drives in my more recent purchases. Thanks for the reminder to power up some little used SSDs...and it's probably time to check my backups!

For some reason I had it in my head that hard drives would last far longer than 3 - 7 years. That is a shockingly short amount of time! I also had no idea about the concept of bit rot. This has given me good reasons to up my backup game to ensure my data is not victim to a common failure modality. Very interesting info!

Nice review of the factors affecting longevity. HDDs and SSDs will last longer if you protect them from electrical surges, select enterprise quality units and have a low volume of data writes. I have 2 HDDs running in a NAS for 10 years without failure, but they are surge protected and have relatively low data writing. They may also fail tomorrow since they are complex units, so backup, backup, backup.

Thank you Chris. This video serves as an excellent a guide for anyone planning to archive their data for a long term.

My now retired main pc ran 24/7/356 with 3 used lap top drives for 8 years. I added a 2 tb drive as a main drive 2 years ago. Still running fine. But I have clean power were I live. Great vid Chris!

Another fine video. I didn't know that SSD or SD drives are constantly rewriting data to keep it current. You live and learn. It would be fascinating to know what they do when they are seemingly doing nothing. It's always interesting seeing colour photos degrade over the years. Most will be gone forever unfortunately in a few decades. It's worth a visit to the Discovery Museum in Newcastle as there is an absolutely perfect carbon ink image which will never degrade, I believe it's a Joseph Swan creation.

Close to 1M subs! The first million out of many you deserve.

Excellent as always Chris, I remember the SSD one, a year or so ago, but having all the media in one, wonderful.

And clay tablets last thousands of years.

Another useful video. I do have a small comment. This video about storing and preserving data also only addresses the risk of data loss due to degradation of the medium. No mention is ever made of recovering corrupt data and the possibility of additional repair data. A good example of this is the use of par2 files which could possibly repair damaged data.

Very useful, professional, and clear. Thank you. I work for more than 30 years now in my own little shop of computer repairs, and I can confirm, from my own experience, all you said here is based in reality. I will conclude, tough, we are still in the "Stone Age" of data preservation, and our tech do not evolved much in the last 30 -50 years, in this field. Like you said, we have much hope in the DNA data storing tech, yet we are light years away from this technology. Sad, we are a dumb race, with self-destruction instincts, spending 95% + of our resources and time, in creating weapons and perpetuating wars, to benefit a few dozens of "golden elites", interested in their own selfishness, and only that, than in our advances as human race. Data storage is fundamental for any advanced civilization, but we are not there, and I highly doubt we will ever be, with the current leadership and current tribal mentality.... We are closer to fusion than to genetic storage systems, yet we are a lot closer to self-destruction and/or absolute totalitarian regimes... Thank you for your efforts to share with us these very useful data, Sir.

OMG I love this guy. So clear and no attitude or Ego whatsoever.

SSDs are basically all I use. Fast R/W speeds, a relatively long lifespan and the recent decrease in price make them my favorite storage option currently. Of course M-disk and putting HDDs in a Raid configuration have there own benefits. But for everyday computing, SSDs are the way to go.

Hi Chris- In addition to carving data into stone, I submit Punched Cards, Punched Tape and Microfiche as a means of storing data long-term. I still have data preserved on this media going on 40 years. Oh yes and printout although the paper is yellowing.😄

Back to your roots. Very well made and informative video. Thank you.

I've been waiting for you to talk about this! Thanks!

I never knew about the hard drive could last around 5 to 7 years but my hard drive is now 10+ years old and it still running fast as usual It's a miracle that your drive is still running for 2 decades. Probably my Hard drive is well done made

It's unsettling when storage media are not expected to last more than a few months or years. A more satisfying timescale would be that of a human life time, e.g. 100 years. When you store something, like photos, you should be able to retrieve them later in life.

THANK YOU for this! 🧡 I have TONS of magnetic and SSD storage, mostly media. An NFL game, recorded to my computer drive, with the highest fidelity is about 15 GB. The whole Super Bowl 58 was about 30 GB. I use Silicone dust, HD Homerun to record it off of Antenna and non-premium cable channels.(Cable Card) They all look GORGEOUS, and I want them all for years to come. 😱

Perfect! Just simply, PERFECT video for this kind of matter. Thank you so very much and greetings from Portugal.

I have some good brand CDs I burnt more than 20 years ago, and they are still readable now. Crappy brand record able CDs though didn't last more than 2 years!

Lenovo Thinkpad W520 SSD at 12 years and still going strong! I really should back up soon... :D Just glad to be on the right side of the bell curve... Thanks for the clear, uncluttered info.

I often tell people to etch things into gold sheets if they need ultimate archival storage, assuming that technology is still available to decode your data in 1000 years. I replied to a post on a forum about this topic, and after a little research, LTO doesn't look very good. Only two manufacturers still supporting it. Many places are going to cloud providers for long term backup, or local NAS that only gets powered up when writing new or reading old data is required.

Excellent video in regards to data storage! Getting M-Discs and an M-disc burner is in my to-do list for a while now. I've used those Zip, Jazz, Syjet, CD-W, DVD-R, BD-R, etc. throughout the years doing backups. Right now my main backups are two Synology NAS'es---one using RAID 1 and another using RAID 6. Both are using btrfs filesystem with scheduled data scrubbing every year and long extended SMART checks every 6 months. They are also syncing to other external backups for higher data redundancy and availability. I have a big album binder of CDs/DVDs/BDs backups I haven't checked for a while (more than 10 years) if they are still any good. They have been stored in a dry and cool place inside the house and watching your video kind of makes me want to see how it's doing now. 😅

Greetings from Brazil! I love your videos! Simple, direct and with plenty of illustrations and super detailed explanations! Congratulations on the channel and always stay strong! Brazilian hugs!

I have several hhds with over 40k hours on them. They all still work great.

You're not the only one who still has working Raptors. I've only lost one of my Raptors and it lasted 13 years being used regularly. WD drives are very resilient.

Love your videos.. no drama, no bull, just solid, well researched and sourced information.

I have a Toshiba 3TB HDD running about 10 years (bought in March 2014), uptime is 26k hours. I think I might consider replacing it before something happens......

Excelent video with quite an encyclopedic structure, yet it is light on facts with providing necessary info, which plays well into the role of the video. Great job :)

So happy to see another exciting learning opportunity Peter. Always makes this long week worth waiting for. Love this channel

This is possibly one of the best videos on UKposts when it comes to informational content. As someone who loves media preservation, this was a very insightful video.

SCSI ZIPs have no problem to survive 20+ years...I can read them all out in my sampler.

I'm glad to see, finally, cumulative write specs. I recall quizzing vendors when SSDs came out, and they just waved their hands.

This is the way information should be presented...clear and to the point...great video and content...💯👍

ALWAYS make backup copies of your data. ALL mediums of data storage are subject to corruption and loss of data. The more copies you have, the better. You should have at least one local copy and at least one remote copy. You can use secondary drives, external drives, and cloud storage solutions for the aforementioned backups.

Excellent video! Just wanted to clarify that when it comes to M-Discs, you only need a special drive for the DVD version. For Blu-ray M-Discs, any regular Blu-ray drive should work. Carve away and enjoy the lasting data! By the way, for a moment, I thought you were going to test the M-Disc you tortured back in 2016 to see if it was still readable :)

Brilliant video and extremely well explained in language everyone can understand, what else would we expect from one of the best UKpostsrs around. Thanks Chris for another superb video. And yes, I still have a large stack of unrecorded DVD's.

One thing that radically affects the life of physical hard drives is how often the drive is physically moved. Hard Drives in laptops are going to fail much more frequently than those of servers or large home computers that aren't moved. These days hard drives are used for bulk storage more than actually running the Operating System itself. If you have an OS that only spins up the drive when its actually needed, the physical hard drive will likely last longer, but it does increase the risk of motor failure. If the hard drive cannot spin up, the drive won't work... BTW... You do a top notch job of explaining all this.

NICE VERY INTERESTING, I LIKE THE FORMAT .

I've seen several instances now in which a company backed their data to tape boasting its longevity, retrieved the tape decades later, but then realized they didn't keep a drive around to actually read it. During the development of Grim Fandango Remastered, they were lucky to stumble across a tape drive in a storage unit. So far, the folks who found the ReBoot master tapes haven't been as lucky finding a D1 tape deck.

Chris, your videos never grow dull and always remain informative. Thank you for doing what you do!!

Thanks a lot; I've learn a lot (as usual) from your video. I was waiting for it during the weekend. Have a nice week!

Keeping your important data in multiple drives also a not a bad idea.

“If you write it in papyrus and store it in a pyramid, it will last a thousand years. Everything else is just guessing” 😉

I can confirm that CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are excellent for long term archiving if high quality media is used. 20 years ago, people used to swear by Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. About a year ago I copied about 100 or so of my mid-00s TY DVD-Rs onto a HDD, and every single one worked without a problem. I'm not sure if TY is still around and/or if their quality is still there... it's just as well I still have half a spindle of old blank TYs somewhere, just in case I ever need to burn stuff to DVD again.

Thank you very much for this video! I will go and manually re-write all my backups on my external HDD. I don't power it on that often, so this will be a good routine to do every so often. Thanks again from the other side of the world. 🙂

I've had more Seagate drives fail than all other brands combined. I hear they are better these days, but that bridge is long burned for me.

The typical avid home computer user/gamer writes about 400-500GB *per month* to their drives, on average. I'm getting ready to retire my 2019-2024 PC build & calculated that I averaged 450GB written per month (15GB per day) & I use my computer a lot for gaming, streaming all the movies/shows that I watch, etc. Over the course of 52 months of use (4.3 years total) my write activity to my primary boot SSD was approx. 23.4 TB total. The intel 480GB 2.5" Enterprise-Class D3-S4610 SSD in it is rated for a write endurance of 3000TB. That should tell you how robust professional enterprise/data-center grade SSD's are. I didn't even hit 1% of its rated endurance as an avid home PC user/gamer over 4.3 years of use.

Bloody brilliant lad. Hugely helpful. Great information for my class.

Thank you for sharing. I appreciate your insight and the work you do on your channel 💜

oh no that inсel again

The truth is drives last much longer than 5-10 years but they are designed to fail so you buy more in the future. Otherwise they could last 10-20 years.

Using 14y.o Samsung HDD and 9y.o Seagate HDD in my main home system right now without issues. Long life to your disks too

I have a CD-RW from 1998.. still has my fam's pictures on it.. I was very surprised!

just now seeing the 1M subs. You must be proud of yourself. best of luck.

Diversifying ones backup and archive strategy is an important defence strategy, use whatever services are available up to the value of your data. Technology improves however one area that many users overlook is the file SYSTEM. Those like ZFS are much better at utilising tiered storage than most systems in use today.

Wow, that was fascinating! Thanks as always Chris.

Visiting your channel is always a treat. Please keep up the awesome work you do. Cheers.

As always I started this video thinking I knew all this, I did not, Great information! Thank you.