Nothing lasts forever. This archival company found that one fifth of its hard disk drives from the 1990s are unreadable. The shiny new technology will soon become obsolete and deteriorate. If transfers aren’t made the originals could be lost forever. Similar issues have come up in film and video games and now it is coming for the music industry, again. Via MIX
But unlike tape, surely, all you need to do, decades later, is connect a drive and open the files. Well, not necessarily. And Iron Mountain would like to alert the music industry at large to the fact that, even though you may have followed recommended best practices at the time, those archived drives may now be no more easily playable than a 40-year-old reel of Ampex 456 tape.
A lot has changed in the world of digital media during the past three decades, so legacy disk formats like Jaz and Zip, obsolete and unsupported connections, and even something as simple as a lost, proprietary wall wart for the enclosure can be a challenge with some older archived assets. Based on years of experience, Iron Mountain has developed hubs at its facilities that can power up, connect to and read virtually any storage medium. If the disk platters spin and aren’t damaged, Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services techs can access the content.
and more from arsTechnica: Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying
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