Storing 8TB+ hard drives for long term access - Helium or Not

Kalandan · Mar 25, 2017

I need to remove about 50 to 100TB of data from our RAIDs and store onto single disks for long term storage on and off site. So I will be making 2 drives on each transfer. They may be stored for 10+ years and never accessed or could be powered up once in a while for data retrieval.

I'm concerned about Helium based drives like Seagate IronWolf 10TB or HGST and whether the Helium could escape. Obviously nobody knows that answer as Helium based hasn't been around that long.

Am I better off going with HGST NAS 8TB drives which I believe don't use Helium and may be one of the last air based large size PMR drives? I prefer to use PMR vs SMR.

Note we do back up to LTO tape as a fall back. But more likely I'll have hardware 10+ years from now that can read drives vs our current LTO-5's.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Paperdoc · Mar 25, 2017

"So I will be making 2 drives on each transfer." Why? Are you making two backup copies of each subset of your data. Or, are you expecting to use a pair of drives in a RAID0 configuration to make a single backup copy from a RAID0 source array?

I would NEVER use a RAI0 array as a backup storage device. There is an increased risk of complete data loss using RAID0. A backup storage medium does not require the small speed advantage of RAID0 over a single drive unit.

But I must agree, making TWO copies of each data subset onto a single drive in each case would be a very secure set of backups.

velocityg4 · Mar 26, 2017

Seals can fail. Although dual backups reduces the risks. A storage environment with a consistent temperature would also reduce the stress on the seal. The real concern is how good is the quality of the seal? Using multiple drive vendors would also decrease the risks.

On the plus side. Being hermetically sealed with an inert gas. Means there is no risk of internal condensation. Which isn't an issue in temperature and humidity controlled storage environment.

Why not archive to 100GB Blu Ray discs? If they aren't likely to be used except on a potential rare occasion.

Kalandan · Mar 26, 2017

Paperdoc :

I am not doing 0. I'm making two copies of single drives and storing one on-site and another off-site. Both locations in a 20 slot drive protected case.

Kalandan · Mar 26, 2017

velocityg4 :

Past history for us doing this procedure with smaller drives tells us the data tends to be accessed from time to time. I don't want to deal with small 100GB discs but thanks for your suggestion.

USAFRet · Mar 26, 2017

10+ years and never touched in the interim....you won't know it has failed until you crank it up in 2028.
Then it will be far too late to do anything about it.

I doubt the helium would be a deciding factor in this.

Kalandan · Mar 28, 2017

I've had some discussions with tech support lately and if I fire them up every 6-12 months to keep the lubricants in motion I should be in good shape, provided humidity and temp remain constant.

I still don't trust the Helium drives long term. I'll go with traditional air for now.

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Storing 8TB+ hard drives for long term access - Helium or Not

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