The music industry is facing an unexpected problem brought on by the digital age: The danger of archived works being lost on HDDs that can no longer be read. Music industry experts say that this situation could soon cause great classical works to be erased from history.
Industry must do something about unreadable HDDs
Nearly a fifth of hard drives from the 1990s are now completely unreadable, according to a recent report from Iron Mountain, the industry’s leading data storage and destruction company. This is a serious warning not just for the music industry, but for all sectors of digital data storage.
“When we discover an inherent problem in a format, it makes sense to publicize it,” said Robert Koszela, Iron Mountain’s director of global studio growth and strategic initiatives. “ This may sound like a sales pitch, but it’s not; it’s a call to action!”
Hard disks had replaced tape with the proliferation of digital audio workstations and mixing software. But it is now becoming increasingly clear that these disks were not designed for long-term archiving. It is nearly impossible to separate the magnetic disks from the reading hardware, and if any part fails, the entire drive is essentially trashed.
When musicians and studios go back to their archives to remaster their tracks (for example, a remastered album), they find that the drives have failed in various ways, leaving them unable to even partially recover.
“ It’s very sad to see a project come into the studio; a brand new hard drive in a case, still with the labels from where it was purchased. Next to it is a case with a security drive. Everything looks tidy. But they’re both as useless as bricks,” Koszela said.
