I don't KNOW how long they last I just know that un powered they start to de magnetize some last a long long time some don't. Most do but they aren't considered archival storage.
Thats all I can find right now.
My Brother is a senior hardware engineer at Cisco I'll ask him what he knows.
On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 10:40 AM, <PhotoRoy6@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Why ? Where is the demagnetizing coming from? and can't they last longer? I think I still have a hard drive with windows 98 on it . I think I will attach it to my windows 7 machine and see if I can read the data.RoyIn a message dated 6/14/2013 8:03:18 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, randyslittle@xxxxxxxxx writes:What we do know is that a un used stored Hard drive can fail in as short as 5 years from demagnification
