I keep hearing people say that hard drives won’t last long and to always have backups. But if it is like that, that means you would have to be buying drives consistently? Has anyone ever had a hard drive work for them successfully for a decade or even more where they wouldn’t have to be buying more?
My 1GB (=Pentium 100 era), 20GB, 200GB IDE disks still worked when I connected them. Some have been unpowered for decades and saved in my shed. (-5 to 35°C and 60-85% humidity) I could open every single file on them that I tested.