March 31st is World Backup Day. It’s sponsored by a number of companies, and as you might expect, all of those sponsors offer some type of product or service related to data backup. But with that said, we appreciate any...

Conventional wisdom holds that a hard drive lasts for about 3-5 years — and most manufacturer warranties tend to support that assumption.  But it’s important to remember that despite precise engineering, hard drives are profoundly sensitive devices. Recently, we’ve seen...

Solid-state drives (SSDs), like all other data storage devices, can fail.  In fact, SSDs have a set lifespan — eventually, the floating gates SSDs use to store data become less reliable, as we discussed in our article about SSD wear ...

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are often considered more reliable than conventional hard drives — and there’s some truth to that.  Hard disk drives (HDDs) have moving mechanical components, so they’re much more susceptible to physical damage than SSDs. But both storage...

Dropbox, one of the world’s leading cloud storage providers, has announced plans to use hard drives featuring heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) in its data centers.  HAMR uses a heating component attached to the hard drive actuator head assembly. By heating...

Silvergate Capital, a bank offering cryptocurrency-friendly services, has announced its impending liquidation, sending Ethereum and Bitcoin markets tumbling by about 2%. The last 12 months have been difficult for crypto investors, though the market has shown some signs of...

Media preservation can be a tricky business. Due to age, humidity, or other factors, legacy formats like Sony U-Matic, Betacam, and other analog video cassettes can become warped, distorted, and unplayable. One well-known tape preservation method is baking tapes, which...

Degaussing is a data sanitization procedure that destroys data by applying powerful magnetic fields. Here’s how the process works.

No, magnets will not damage solid-state drives. However, changes in magnetic fields might cause data loss under certain circumstances. Strong magnetic fields can destroy data on hard disk drives (HDDs) and data tapes, for a simple reason: Those devices use...

Recently, we digitized ¾-inch Sony U-matic cartridges that had sat in storage for about four decades — with no considerations for humidity, heat, or other factors that could cause signal loss.  That project was largely successful, but it highlights the...