We always talk about the importance of creating backups, but doing it correctly. In this article I’m going to tell you a personal anecdote, with a very old hard drive where I stored backups of that time. I’m going to tell you what happened once that drive was turned on after almost 20 years and, also, what I have learned from this experience and that I want to share with others.
Specifically, it was a hard drive of just 40 GB, which also worked as an MP3 player. A brick, but at the time it was something quite curious and useful. Of course, with the passage of time, having a disk like that was useless. It was forgotten in a drawer, until now, many years later, I decided to turn it on.
Hard drive with two decades
This hard drive was a bit peculiar, as it was a 2.5-inch HDD type, which was inside a casing, with different buttons for using it as an MP3 player. The thing is, when I connected it to the PC with the cable that came from the factory, it no longer worked. Although it received power, for some reason it got stuck and the computer did not detect it and therefore could not access the files.
What I did was buy a case for hard drives of this size and see if it worked. Sure enough, by connecting it this way (simply through a USB cable connected to the case) it appeared on the computer as another drive. Basically, as if I had connected any more modern pendrive or storage unit.
But it wasn’t working 100%. Even though I could see all the folders inside it, many files were corrupted. For example, there are photos and videos taken with phones from two decades ago. Some videos and photos open normally, but others get stuck and can’t be opened, copied or done anything.
So, I have been able to partially access a backup from almost 20 years ago, but not completely. Many files have been lost, they have become completely inaccessible. It is true that there are methods to analyze hard drives and even recover files, but in many cases it is a complicated task and it is not always possible.
What I have learned
So what have I learned from all this? The first thing is that you can’t rely on just one drive to back up your data. It could stop working, it could have problems and you could lose the content, or at least some of it. Therefore, I recommend that you have multiple backups, on different drives.
I have also learned that, as time goes by, technology changes and new models come out that may seem more interesting. This can cause something you use every day to take a backseat and you forget about it. This can result in the fact that, once you need to use it, it no longer works as you remember.
Ultimately, a well-maintained hard drive could last for many years in full operation. Even so, there is always the risk that it will stop working, either completely or partially, and you will lose the content. I always recommend that you create several backup copies and not take any risks with your files.
