Archiving To Hard Drive? Be Very Careful

There were a few exciting projects around here at R Cubed Networks before The Digital Lifestyle. Sadly, their time has passed, and they only exist on a few hard drives living in the closet. However, final cut pro guru Larry Jordan has sounded the warning bells about archiving to hard drive.

In his September newsletter, Jordan said he has talked to hard drive engineers, indicating the lifespan of data sitting on an unplugged drive may be much shorter than we thought:

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. The issue is complex, as you'll see, but this is a MUCH shorter shelf-life than I was expecting.

The way to keep the files on your hard disks safe is to connect the hard drive to your computer every six months or so and, ideally, copy all the files from one drive to another. Failing that, use a program like Micromat's TechTool Pro, or ProSoft's Drive Genius, to do a complete scan of your hard drive. Doing so will replenish any magnetic signals that are starting to fade.

If you'll excuse us, we have some data moving to do...

The great HD scam

I'm in the market for a new backup hard drive. It's been years since I've purchased a hard drive and prices has plummeted significantly while storage capacity is on the rise. The thought of a 1TB drive was merely a pipedream when I last purchased.

I went over to my local Best Buy and picked up a 750GB drive (for the purpose of this post the brand is not important - we'll assume its a major well known brand). It's a plug and play USB 2.o drive. I'm not here to review the drive but to call out the giant HD scam that companies are pulling on society.

If you were to buy a 750GB and the drive was blank when you started how many usable GB would you expect to get? This seems like a simple and stupid question . . . you would expect to get 750GB, it says it right on the box. Unfortunately you'll only get a certain percentage of that capacity. For example I got roughly 698 GB. It all has to do with math but the bottom line is that the consumer is getting less than advertised, approximately 70.3M / GB less.

Manufacturers think we can't think in actual numbers so they advertise in base 10 numbers. I would feel less cheated if the box said 700GB on it. It would be more accurate to the actual space I'm getting and should I put some crazy file system on it I may even get more out of it (then I'd feel like a super genius . . . MORE THAN ADVERTISED!!).

My message here is really Buyer Be Ware . . . your 750GB drive doesn't get you 750GB