Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2005 16:43:30 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Norberto Meijome" <numard@meijome.net>, "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: [OT] Life expectancy of powered down hard drives.... Message-ID: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNCEEOFCAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <431D9B74.7000409@meijome.net>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Norberto >Meijome >Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 6:37 AM >To: FreeBSD Questions >Subject: [OT] Life expectancy of powered down hard drives.... > > >hi all, >I know this doesn't relate to FBSD per se, but I figured i'd >try to pick >your brains :) > >I read somewhere (sorry, cant remember where) that hard drives fail if >not powered up every so often (not sure of time frames, but the >discussion was about tapes still being better for backups than hard >drives if planning for long term storage). They can fail if they are left running 24x7 for months or years at a time then shut down for 24 hours or so. Never heard of the 'drive will fail if not powered up every so often" line, though. > It was also mentioned a >"knock on the centre of the drive" to bring it back to life (??). > That used to be the case with some old disks. Once brought back to life this way you had enough time to get the data off the disk before it crashed for good. 40 Megabyte Seagate MFM ST251's were famous for this. >How much truth is in this? I have EIDE drives that I havent used in >years and I just tested them and they work fine...but again, >I've had an >instance of a new drive, used twice to backup some info and then left >untouched for 10 months, and it wouldn't even spin up... > So have I. I've also had brand new drives out of the box that wouldn't even spin up. >Does this affect SCSI drives? I suppose it would be more likely to >affect desktop-quality IDE / SATA drives... > It affects all drives. Ted
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