Seagate slapped with class action lawsuit over hard drive failure rate

mjf said:

If I didn't have system images and other important data on these drives I'd give it ago. .

Well, I consider that to be important enough to always use some kind of removable to store critical
items. In the Win98 days, I used those SCSI LS100 [100MB] drives to store images,(legacy from my old Atari TT) then later started burning images to DVDs(once I got the hang of Windoze s/w) and in the future, since I've been including card readers in all my builds, of moving to Compact Flash and/or Secure Digital because some times the image can exceed the capacity of even a dual layer {BR} DVD.
For now, because they're cheap, I still use DVDs but with a file splitter/joiner I found at Majorgeeks in the utilities section.

It depends on how precious the data is to you.

BlueGuy said:

Well, I consider that to be important enough to always use some kind of removable to store critical
items.
....
For now, because they're cheap, I still use DVDs but with a file splitter/joiner I found at Majorgeeks in the utilities section.

It depends on how precious the data is to you.

I use basic sata HDDs in a docking station. I have numerous external WD drives in WD enclosures but I've already commented on their deficiencies. I would never rely on CD/DVDs for long term data storage unless they were certified archive quality and they are expensive.

I still use CDR's & DVD's to store important/personal files. Granted, they are subject to bit rot, but that's something I don't have to worry about for a while. Once it's written on the disk & stored in a safe place, you truly have a hard copy that has no chance of failure (unless you give the CD to a small child or someone that's careless, then the resulting scratches could ruin it.).

Borg 386 said:

I still use CDR's & DVD's to store important/personal files. Granted, they are subject to bit rot, but that's something I don't have to worry about for a while. Once it's written on the disk & stored in a safe place, you truly have a hard copy that has no chance of failure (unless you give the CD to a small child or someone that's careless, then the resulting scratches could ruin it.).

The optical disks are ok unless you have several hundred GB of data to store.

National Institute of Standards and Technology
Special Publication 500-252, October 2003, Final
NIST Digital Media Group: digitalPhysicalMediaAndDevice
Storage conditions are important as well as the quality of the manufacture.
"> Few, if any, life expectancy reports for these discs have been published by independent laboratories. An accelerated aging study at
NIST estimated the life expectancy of one type of DVD-R for authoring disc to be 30 years if stored at 25°C (77°F) and 50% relative humidity. This testing for R discs is in the preliminary stages, and much
more needs to be done."

"> The life expectancy (LE) of optical discs depends on many factors,
some controllable by the user, others not.
Factors that affect disc life expectancy include the following:
• type
• manufacturing quality
• condition of the disc before recording
• quality of the disc recording
• handling and maintenance
• environmental conditions"

They also say that manufacturers typically specify a shelf life of ~5 years before writing. So old CD/DVDs should not be used.
In short I'd make at least 2 copies for say documents, photos etc. I'd never use DVDs for a system image.
The other thing which may not be mentioned in the report is the effect of your DVD writer alignment. If the alignment is out then you may have difficulty reading the CD/DVD on a properly aligned unit.

I should have kept my my mouth shut.

My oldest WD Green HDD (June 2009) suddenly stopped yesterday (a few minutes into a video).
The last time I checked the SMART data it was still looking good.

Over six years of use doesn't seem too bad though.

Most of my important data is on a 1TB Seagate split into 2 partitions. It would have to be ~ 5 years old. HDDs are like big dogs - Never fully trust them. I periodically clone this data drive to a 1TB WD Black kept in a docking station. When the Seagate dies I'll plug in the WD Black, buy a new HDD and continue the process.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

The optical disks are ok unless you have several hundred GB of data to store.

That unfortunately is true. But using them for pictures, music, etc., works good for me. It's definitely not a good medium for large amounts of files. But still, I trust those better then having all my files on a HDD only to have it fail one day & loose it all.

Just out of curiosity, I set up doing a system image for Win 7 on disks to see how many it would take. It said the image would need 8 DVD R's.