Enterprise storage and destruction company Iron Mountain is responsible for archiving media industry vaults. Recent findings should serve as a serious alert: approximately 20% of the hard drives from the 1990s that it has received are completely unreadable.
In a conversation with music industry publication Mix, Iron Mountain’s experts discussed the complexity of archiving music today and issued a cautionary note regarding data stored on traditional hard drives.
“If we identify an inherent issue with a format, our duty is to inform everyone,” stated Robert Koszela, Iron Mountain’s global director for studio growth and strategic initiatives, in his remarks to Mix. “This might sound like a sales pitch, but it’s genuinely a call to action.”
Hard drives became the preferred medium over magnetic tape due to advancements in digital audio workstations and mixing software, as well as concerns about deterioration from tape degradation and incidents like the 2008 Universal Studios fire. However, hard drives come with their own set of archival challenges. They were not initially designed for long-term storage, and it’s nearly impossible to separate the magnetic disks from the reading hardware inside. If either component fails, the entire drive becomes unusable.
Beyond hardware issues, there are complications related to separating samples from finished tracks and the unique file formats that require specific versions of software for archival purposes. Nevertheless, Iron Mountain assures Mix that as long as the disk platters spin and are undamaged, they can access the content.
However, the crucial question of whether the drives still spin is becoming increasingly concerning. Musicians and studios revisiting their archives for remastering are often discovering that drives, even those stored under optimal conditions, have unexpectedly failed with no chance for partial recovery.
“It’s incredibly disheartening to see a project come into the studio, a hard drive still inside its new case with all the original packaging intact,” Koszela lamented. “Next to it, there’s a safety drive, and both of them end up being useless.”
The warning shared by Iron Mountain recently gained traction on Hacker News, prompting other experiences and anecdotes related to archival mishaps. The consensus is clear: no medium can be fully trusted, which underscores the need for continual copying of crucial data into new storage formats. As one user stated, “Optical media deteriorates, magnetic media loses its charge, bearings seize up, and flash storage can also fail. Entropy prevails, often more quickly than anticipated.”
Discussions also emerged regarding the unreliability of SSDs for archival purposes, variations in floppy disk quality over the decades, and the compatibility issues faced with Linear Tape-Open formats across generations. Concerns were also raised about how improperly stored CD-Rs and DVD-Rs can become unreadable due to bending.
The understanding that hard drives will ultimately fail is not new knowledge. Discussions about the stages of hard drive failure date back to 2005, revealing patterns of mortality among drives. Recent data from backup company Backblaze showed a tendency for failing drives to do so within three years, emphasizing that no model is completely immune, and time inevitably degrades performance. Google’s server drive data from 2007 indicated that hard drive failures were largely unpredictable.
Thus, Iron Mountain’s caution to music companies serves as yet another reminder of the fragility of data archiving. The continuous emergence of new information highlights the need to stay vigilant regarding the preservation of valuable archives..
