Digital data backup: create long-term archiving with hard drives Progress driver Shingled Magnetic Recording 1 to 18 TByte PC as backup: New and old Guarantee: Five years and longer Article in c’t 22 / 2020 read A USB hard drive should be available in many households be it as a backup disk or for transporting data. But is such a disk also good for storing important data for decades?

We asked the three remaining manufacturers Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital about their assessments of the suitability of hard drives for long-term archiving. Overall, they are convinced of the longevity of their products, but they do not want to give a guarantee for the readability of the data after more than five years.

Nevertheless, hard drives are currently the best option for long-term data backup – if you think of your dream adopted that the archive should be created once and then the next 50 years ago.

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