On Wed, 2010-03-24 at 13:14 -0500, Josh Fisher wrote:
> > Agreed. I would not expect a drive to be readable if you sit it on a
> > shelf for 10 years. It probably would not spin up unless you kept it
> > in a humidity protected environment.
> >    
> 
> All media fails in the long run. It is just a matter of how often you 
> have to refresh the long term storage. 


Magnetic domains deteriorate over time due to thermal agitation of the
molecules, stray magnetic fields, etc. The bearings in the drive are
probably okay for ten years or so in storage, but I would wonder whether
the lubricating fluids would be stable that long. Also, there is the
question of whether the drive interfaces will still be supportable in a
decade. If you had an old MFM or RLL drive from the 1980s or early 1990s
today, you'd play hell trying to find a controller. If you had a
controller, you'd play hell trying to find an ISA bus machine to plug it
into.

Long-term archiving is a tough and complex problem, unfortunately.

Scott

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott D. COURTNEY, Principal Engineer            Sine Nomine Associates
scourtney AT sinenomine DOT net                     http://www.sinenomine.net/




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