I've recently recovered data from a pair of 15GB and 20GB drives I last used in 2001 (and were stored in an ordinary closet of a house that experienced inside temperatures ranging from 5C to 30C over that time, and great humidity/dryness flactuations over those 17 years). There were 16 bad 512-byte sectors on one of the drives, but otherwise all worked.
Modern higher density drives are probably less resilient, and who knows how flash drives will fair after 17 years in the closet - but my experience so far is that HDDs trump backup tapes on every measure including costs except at extreme sizes (at this point in time, into the petabytes).
Modern higher density drives are probably less resilient, and who knows how flash drives will fair after 17 years in the closet - but my experience so far is that HDDs trump backup tapes on every measure including costs except at extreme sizes (at this point in time, into the petabytes).