Sorry dude, but bit rot is a very real thing on HDDs. They're magnetic media, which degrades over time. If you leave a disk cold for 2-5 years, there's a very good chance you'll get some bad sectors. SSDs aren't immune from bit rot, but that's not through quantum tunneling - not any more than your CPU is affected by it at least.
floquant
joined 9 months ago
I think these were final, retail versions that were being prepared for physical distribution ahead of release
Well said, extremely on point. I'm just curious about your view on the timeframe - you'd say this started in the 40s or earlier? In my mind it was more around the 60s, together with the rise of neoliberalism
Note that for HDDs, it doesn't matter if they're powered or not. The platter is not "energized" or refreshed during operation like an SSD is. Your best bet is to have some kind of parity to identify and repair those bad bits.