Hard Disk Warning!
OK, that caught my attention, and probably yours as well. So what gives? Why the alarm?
According to research and conversations with several hard drive experts conducted by Final Cut Pro whiz Larry Jordan, there is every reason to be more cognizant of your long-term offline drive storage. Your existing plan of backing up data to removable or external drives might not be so full of peace of mind as you thought. In his research with several disk companies he discovered that the magnetically-stored data of a disk is designed to be refreshed periodically. Your online drives perform this action automatically but your offline drives in your vault are at risk.
“According to what I’ve been told, the life-span of a magnetic signal on a hard disk is between a year and a year and a half…”
So, what is the solution? Put an automatic reminder on your calendar every year, or every six months if you want to be really safe, and spend that day hooking up your drives and doing a complete scan of the contents (Larry recommends TechTool Pro or Drive Genius). One day a year is a small price to pay for long-term viability of your valuable archives.
(Via Hard Disk Warning!, from Larry Jordan’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter.)