HDs with 90s music are starting to fail

Major record labels are facing a problem with their storage. The hard drives used since the 90s to store music and recording sessions are breaking down. In addition to the risk of losing these files, the problem affects the remastering of songs for high-quality streaming formats.

The case was published by Mix magazine, a music magazine that obtained the information from Iron Mountain, a company that recovers storage devices and serves entertainment companies. In the 1990s, record companies began to use hard drives to store their files because of their practicality — or what seemed to be practicality at the time.

One-fifth of 1990s HDDs are unrecoverable

Of every five hard drives that arrive at Iron Mountain, one cannot be read — that was Starway to Heaven. The company points out that even if stored correctly, hard drives will fail after a few years.

The problem is even greater when the owners (whether record labels, musicians or those responsible for the estate) do not maintain a process of regularly checking the health of their hard drives. For example, you know when your hard drive is failing when your computer starts experiencing problems.

If a record label or studio just throws an HDD (another name for a hard drive) in the vault and only takes it out when it’s time to remaster the material, it could go years without noticing its gradual deterioration. Even if stored in an environment with ideal conditions, it could fail before the end of its useful life — which is shorter than that of SSDs.

Koszela explains that small studios or artists’ estates are less careful with their hard drives, leaving them in a random place at headquarters. Large studios, on the other hand, take a long time to evaluate hard drives because they are waiting for commercial strategies — such as a re-release to celebrate an album’s anniversary. Before joining the company, Koszela was an employee of Universal Music Group.

Iron Mountain points out that there are cases of hard drives used in recordings from 1990 to 1995 that are breaking down. Robert Koszela, one of the company’s directors, reports that hard drives from some companies arrive with the labels from when they were purchased still on them — and already beyond repair.

Streaming leads record labels to notice problems

With music streaming becoming more popular and providing high-quality music (except for Spotify), record labels need to remaster music to newer formats and support the latest codecs. So when companies look to HDDs for this process, they realize the problems.

As the Mix website points out, even the popularity of Guitar Hero has led record labels to remaster old songs. Movies also require improvements in the quality of songs. After all, it is an industry that is evolving in audio technology.

With information: Mix and Ars Technica.