Posted by Ken Maltby on 10/31/81 11:37

While it is true that hard drives are backed-up in part
because they may fail - "in service"; a number of respected
organizations back-up to other hard drives. These drives
are kept "out of service"/stored in a safe fashion. The main
source of "disk failure" is a matter of critical data corruption,
from software errors, human error or deliberately by a virus,
things that don't happen to a hard drive in off line storage.

Unless you keep your hard drives in a massive fluctuating
magnetic field, the data on the platters will last several
decades, in storage. Burned, die based DVDs are still a big
question mark. And what evidence there is, supports the
position that at least some dies are subject to deterioration/
rot over time. It may be that the current dies have solved
that issue, but only time will really tell.

Luck;
Ken

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