![]() ![]() Some government organizations "sanitize" hard drives by exposing them to a very powerful magnetic field, effectively (and literally) removing the data from the hard drive by "resetting" all of the sectors. Many archive formats support the inclusion of data recovery algorithms, so even if you have a few corrupted sectors, you can still re-build the lost data. You can also help to avoid this issue by archiving your data with recovery data and error correction when you put the data onto the drive. If you're concerned about filesystem corruption, you can also format the disk before transferring the data back. ![]() That way, the magnetic domains in the physical disk surface will be renewed with their original strength (because you just re-wrote the files back to the disk). To periodically refresh the data on the drive, simply transfer it to another location, and re-writing it back to the drive. How frequently you need to do this depends on the following two issues (I also go over this in my conclusion). Obviously, this is quite a long time, but this risk is easily mitigated - simply re-write the data to the drive. Assuming this is valid, after ~69 years, we can assume that half of the sectors in a hard drive would be corrupted (since they all lost half of their strength by this time). Most sources state that permanent magnets lose their magnetic field strength at a rate of 1% per year. For hard drives, there are three main factors: magnetic field breakdown, environmental conditions, and mechanical failure. The longevity of the data stored on any drive depends on the conditions where it is stored and for how long. ![]()
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March 2023
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