Archive Management Services Company Iron Mountain Warns of Data Loss Risks

About a fifth of the hard drives that host many historical recording files from the early to mid-1990s through its services cannot be read normally, resulting in the loss of a lot of music data.

Importance of Offsite Storage and Media Diversification

Market Opinion: Important information should not only be stored offsite, but should also be copied to different media for archiving at regular intervals.

Iron Mountain stressed that while the industry generally uses hard drives that operate in standard temperature- and humidity-controlled environments to store data, there is still the possibility of failures that make a situation unrecoverable.

Current State of Cold Data Storage

Currently, the vast majority of cold data on the market is mostly stored on hard disks. Previously, it was stored via a large number of tape systems, however, in recent years, it has gradually been transferred to hard disks at high costs for space continues to decrease.

However, even though the hard disk failure rate has been much lower than in the past, and the reliability of data storage can be ensured by RAID technology, data may still be damaged or lost due to sudden factors such as data center fires.

Value of Long-Term Storage

For many cold materials that have been stored for a long time, their value usually only appears when there is demand. For example, Iron Mountain stores a number of historical recording archives from the early to mid-1990s, which are music mixes of major record companies.

When it is necessary to meet the production, it is found that the long-term stored music data has become unusable due to the damage of the hard disk. However, storing these cold data usually takes up a large amount of storage space. The capacity will inevitably lead to a large amount of expenses.

Importance of Regular Backups and Media Diversification

Since different storage media have advantages and disadvantages, more and more people believe that in addition to adding different backup methods, it is more important to copy important contents to different storage media for backup at regular intervals.