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Can a HD that's just sitting there possibly die over time?

V

Vertigo-1

Senior member
Basically I want to get a 300 gig HD and keep it as an external so that once I'm done backing up, I can turn the HD off and thus hopefully preserve its lifespan for a long time. Now the question is, short of me throwing the HD across the room or taking a magnet to it, can a HD just suddenly die on its own for no apparent reason, if it's just sitting there? Sort of like how floppies just seem to die over time?
 
Originally posted by: Vertigo-1
Basically I want to get a 300 gig HD and keep it as an external so that once I'm done backing up, I can turn the HD off and thus hopefully preserve its lifespan for a long time. Now the question is, short of me throwing the HD across the room or taking a magnet to it, can a HD just suddenly die on its own for no apparent reason, if it's just sitting there? Sort of like how floppies just seem to die over time?
Click to expand...

hard drives have much better protection than floppies do. i would say it would be okay. their lives are measured in powered-on time... keep it in a cool dry place out of direct sunlight, and away from strong magentic fields and you should be fine.
 
Harddisks are quite durable, especially if they stored in a cool dry place. My old 1 Gig Quantum Fireball (circa 1995) is still functioning nicely.
 
Have several old, old, old drives....

Recently I pulled a few from some old hospital machines that had been sitting in an old storage building with leaks and broken windows for years. All worked fine and the data was still there. I grabbed an old JTS that was a half thick 3 1/2 with 1.1 gig... Made some noise but could be accessed and read/write. Maybe the environment played a factor in the noise that one was making... don't know.... But if you are only going to turn it on every once in a while to backup data, then you should have very little to worry about...

There's always Murphy's Law though. 🙂 ..and power surges, theft, fires, floods.....
 
I had a couple drives die on me that were stored in a damp basement.
The circuit board probably got corroded.
Talking like 5 years.
 
The biggest risks from a HD that hasn't been powered-up in a while, is having the bearing lube dry out, and/or the head sticking to the platter ("sticktion"). Both factors will act to prevent the drive from spinning-up properly. I've also experienced both with really old (~10 years) drives that I had lying around, that were otherwise nearly fully usable. Kind of a shame, really. I put 2 x 1GB drives in a machine that I gave away to someone, and one of those drives had an apparent bearing-lube problem.
 
I personally setup a RAID1 array to handle my long-term storage of photos, music, and other data. A drive dies? No problem. I still have the exact data on the other ones. 🙂 I simply replace the dead drive and the restoring begins.
 
I hope not - some really REALLY hopeful general electronics companies still list old hard drives for sale. Example - 425MB hard drive for $45.95. Refurbed, but I'd still imagine that there hasn't been too awful much use on it in the past year or ten.


I'm also employing a removable hard drive bay for long term storage - I'm a bit wary of DVDs after the CD-R fiasco years ago, where the reflective layer would start peeling after only a few months.
I do have a RAID 5 setup already, but if one good power surge gets through my UPS, it's toast. So I wanted something that can sit next to the computer too. All these hard drives of course have resulted in me having access to an obscene amount of total storage space. 🙂
Just totaled it up - close to 2TB at my disposal. More if you count the drives I'm trying to sell.😀
 
Example - 425MB hard drive for $45.95.
Click to expand...

i can put my 8GB for sale for $40, just that no body would even ask.

I'm also employing a removable hard drive bay for long term storage - I'm a bit wary of DVDs after the CD-R fiasco years ago, where the reflective layer would start peeling after only a few months.
Click to expand...

any idea of affordable and reliable long term storage? otpical disk can get scratched and just plain wear out naturally, and HDD are definately not reliable, flash medii are not affordable... i have yet found a good solution.
 
Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
The biggest risks from a HD that hasn't been powered-up in a while, is having the bearing lube dry out, and/or the head sticking to the platter ("sticktion"). Both factors will act to prevent the drive from spinning-up properly. I've also experienced both with really old (~10 years) drives that I had lying around, that were otherwise nearly fully usable. Kind of a shame, really. I put 2 x 1GB drives in a machine that I gave away to someone, and one of those drives had an apparent bearing-lube problem.
Click to expand...

The design of the components you point out have changed quite significantly since the days of 1GB drives (some 7-9 years ago or so). Few drives use traditional bearings anymore and tribology has undergone some pretty massive advancements since those days too. In those days resting stiction was alleviated by just texturing a zone near the ID a little rougher than the rest of the surface, but now most media has precise bumps generated in patterns by a laser beam to ensure a small surface contact area. Heads have small contact areas designed into them ('landing pads' so to speak). Also, increasing areal density has naturally led to smaller heads in general as track width has decreased. The area in close contact has reduced by more than an order of magnitude since the days of zone texture such that the days of heads sticking to media are long gone. Some manufacturers were using load/unload and/or ramp load technology in normal desktop drives at one time (IBM), which completely eliminates contact at rest, but I believe now just about everyone making normal consumer level drives is using laser textured media and some form of head with "landing pads" to keep manufacturing costs down, as unloading the heads completely requires additional systems inside the drive.

 
Originally posted by: Concillian
Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
The biggest risks from a HD that hasn't been powered-up in a while, is having the bearing lube dry out, and/or the head sticking to the platter ("sticktion"). Both factors will act to prevent the drive from spinning-up properly. I've also experienced both with really old (~10 years) drives that I had lying around, that were otherwise nearly fully usable. Kind of a shame, really. I put 2 x 1GB drives in a machine that I gave away to someone, and one of those drives had an apparent bearing-lube problem.
Click to expand...

The design of the components you point out have changed quite significantly since the days of 1GB drives (some 7-9 years ago or so). Few drives use traditional bearings anymore and tribology has undergone some pretty massive advancements since those days too. In those days resting stiction was alleviated by just texturing a zone near the ID a little rougher than the rest of the surface, but now most media has precise bumps generated in patterns by a laser beam to ensure a small surface contact area. Heads have small contact areas designed into them ('landing pads' so to speak). Also, increasing areal density has naturally led to smaller heads in general as track width has decreased. The area in close contact has reduced by more than an order of magnitude since the days of zone texture such that the days of heads sticking to media are long gone. Some manufacturers were using load/unload and/or ramp load technology in normal desktop drives at one time (IBM), which completely eliminates contact at rest, but I believe now just about everyone making normal consumer level drives is using laser textured media and some form of head with "landing pads" to keep manufacturing costs down, as unloading the heads completely requires additional systems inside the drive.
Click to expand...


Most hard drives to this day still "park" their heads off the platter once power is killed, or machine is suspended.
 
quote:
I'm also employing a removable hard drive bay for long term storage - I'm a bit wary of DVDs after the CD-R fiasco years ago, where the reflective layer would start peeling after only a few months.

any idea of affordable and reliable long term storage? otpical disk can get scratched and just plain wear out naturally, and HDD are definately not reliable, flash medii are not affordable... i have yet found a good solution.
Click to expand...

Hard drives are pretty reliable if you're using them more often than once a year or two. 😛 They're great for nearline storage and backup, but probably not the *best* choice for true long-term archival. There are just too many mechanical things that can go wrong with them.

DVD-Rs, as long as you are careful and don't scratch them up, should last at least 5 years, maybe much more. If you have things you are trying to archive long-term (say, personal photos or videos, or electronic documents), what I would recommend is to put multiple copies on DVD (store at least one offsite, to protect against true disasters), and every 3-5 years, burn them onto new media. This also gives you a chance to condense them onto newer formats (such as Blu-Ray/HD-DVD) at the same time.

Frankly, the best thing for real long-term backup archiving is still tape. DAT cassettes (20GB capacity) are fairly cheap (maybe $.25/GB in bulk, only slightly more than DVD-Rs), extremely rugged, and can last a long time (as long as you don't demagnetize them somehow). The drives are also practically guaranteed to be around forever, since they're so widely used for backup (they might not be cheap, but they'll be available).
 
Originally posted by: WackyDan


Most hard drives to this day still "park" their heads off the platter once power is killed, or machine is suspended.
Click to expand...

Only on drives that use glass substrates (mostly just mobile drives)

Normal desktop drives typically do not unload the heads, the heads are parked in the laser texture zone at the ID and are in contact with the media.
 
I think notebook drive heads are unloaded when powered off. Allows for the extremely high non-operating shock ratings.
. If the data is important, I would want to do at least annual "thorough" scandisk routines where all the data is read and re-written (refreshed) to keep the magnetic signals in the media from deterioration.

.bh.
 
Lotsa good info here, thanks!


Originally posted by: mooncancook

any idea of affordable and reliable long term storage? otpical disk can get scratched and just plain wear out naturally, and HDD are definately not reliable, flash medii are not affordable... i have yet found a good solution.
Click to expand...


My exact same dilemma...I would go the DVD-R route except it'd take too long to go and try to backup a hundred or more gigs of data. HDs really the only practical way to go timewise and spacewise, but I worry about it developing mechanical problems.
 
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