[OT] Life expectancy of powered down hard drives....

[Norberto Meijome]

Roland Smith wrote:

>On Tue, Sep 06, 2005 at 11:36:52PM +1000, Norberto Meijome wrote:
>
>  
>
>>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). It was also mentioned a 
>>"knock on the centre of the drive" to bring it back to life (??).
>>
>>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...
>>    
>>
>
>When a disk spins down, the heads move to the landing zone, stop
>floating on an air-cushion that forms when the platters are spinning and
>come in contact with the platters.
>
>So the disk platters are lubricated to prevent wear and tear during
>stops/starts. Now in the past these lubricants used to become sticky
>over time, preventing the drive from starting up. I'm not sure if it is
>still a problem these days; my workstation is on 24/7.
>  
>
gotcha, thanks - I thought it could be an issue with older drives.