Comment by spockz
3 years ago
I’ve had some similarly old hardware that didn’t boot and a desktop that had been powered off over an holiday. Both had corrupt data but on the second one it was in a file crucial for windows to boot so I had to repair it. Data corruption can occur without notice.
And it's all pretty anecdotal with one digit sample sizes.
I don't think this can really be answered unless we get something like the reliability report from blackblaze. Still, i hope I'll read about the final result of the article in a few years.
Anecdotal, yes, but having any data is a better indication than having no data. If nobody can find evidence of the phenomenon you know you're more likely fine (no guarantee) than when people start plugging in old drives and some discover rotting.