Doubt HDD storage

[patrion87]

How many months can a notebook HDD remain unused without damaging its mechanics and data? to keep its mechanics healthy and the data turn on the HDD every day? do the manufacturers say something?

[TreeTops]

Got your answer by searching the web:

"The strength of a classic hard disk drive (HDD) is a well-honed mechanism. Due to its mode of operation, the classic electromagnetic hard disk is less subject to failures due to wear and tear. The popular endurance of an HDD owes a lot to its working mechanism: the rotating platters and the read head never come into contact; the latter only just shaves past the magnetic coating to read the data. As long as this lack of contact persists, the hard disk can continue to operate normally, and in theory, even last forever."

[patrion87]

Are the mechanics of the internal and external HDD and the platter motor lubricated? If the HDD remains stored for years, the lubrication dries out the engine and the mechanics locks up?

[TreeTops]

Are you, by any chance trolling?

[patrion87]

no, because?

[zing269]

I have had a 30+ year old HDD boot and run and have had a 5 year old Quantum Hardcard disk fail to spin up due to lubrication issues. I would not worry about the lubrication failing over time but rather having the proper hardware to access the disk in the future. The 30+ year old disk was an MFM drive in an old Wells American Compustar with an ISA bus drive controller, I think it would be hard to find a working controller or a working PC with an ISA bus today.

[davexnet]

I've got PC's using old HDD's and some of them only turned on about once a year or so.

I've got a Zeos Pentium 90 PC from 1994 that still works (but I haven't been able to test it recently because
I no longer have a serial port connection keyboard)

I probably think since I kept the PC/drives indoors, with reasonable variations of temperature, this is about the best
you can do. The rest is down to luck

[usually_quiet]

Are you, by any chance trolling?

Are you perhaps reminded of a former member who was banned several times for repeating questions over and over but eventually returned with a new username?

[lingyi]

Are the mechanics of the internal and external HDD and the platter motor lubricated? If the HDD remains stored for years, the lubrication dries out the engine and the mechanics locks up?

If there's high humidity, fungus may grow!

[TreeTops]

I usually stop feeding trolls after they repeat the question that was answered.

[Swedaniel]

How many months can a notebook HDD remain unused without damaging its mechanics and data? to keep its mechanics healthy and the data turn on the HDD every day? do the manufacturers say something?

An Hard Drive Disk gets teared quicker if you turn it on and off very often and allso if it is used extremely to the point where the readers must go fully active and read back and forth... To use it normally should keep it alive for an long time, if youre not going to use it for an longer time it will tear less by turning it off!

If the disk have been off for many many years they tend to act a lil bit as if they are broken and fail to start and the computer cannot find the disk as easily as it did when it was brand new.. Most of the times by visiting the disk management and BIOS and worse case scenario is to switch IDE/SATA Ports,or to try with different cables will help get the disk going again! (even switching to an other power cable on the Power Supply can help) Some functions within windows that can contact an disk can allso all of a sudden just wake the disk and it start function when this happen. It has happend allso an old disk was found within disk management but it could not function proper untill i had formatted the disk, all data lost but the disk was working pretty good! Allso a few was semi-functioning and sometimes dissapeared within Windows, formatting the disk fixed the issue.

Ive had some Western Digital disks inactive for 7-10 years that was difficult to start up, but mixing around with the cables and some bios settings got them going again! Plus i had allready used the hard drive for a few years! Ellse you might want to concider replacing them after 7-10 years usage!

[lingyi]

Working and working correctly are two different things. Just because the disk is spinning and recognized doesn't mean the data is intact. And the disk you had to format is useless for its archived data.

[Swedaniel]

Working and working correctly are two different things. Just because the disk is spinning and recognized doesn't mean the data is intact. And the disk you had to format is useless for its archived data.

Well i had allready collected the files to an other disk many years before this so for me it didnt matter! Once done with formatting the over 20 year old disk was working again can could be used with an old computer that had no disk! They had been in an box for all theese years and been tossed around the place!

[lingyi]

Understand. But you didn't address the question gamemaniaco...errrr...patrion87 asked.

How many months can a notebook HDD remain unused without damaging its mechanics and data? to keep its mechanics healthy and the data turn on the HDD every day?

The real answer is that there's no definitive answer. Only situational, anecdotal experiences like yours and the others that in no way is indicative what anyone else may experience. Especially when it comes to data integrity. Data on a drive that's working right now, may fail in the next second or be good for another ten years.

Since you're new here, gamemaniaco, patrion87 and a half dozen other names under which he's been banned, has a serious problem accepting any answer given him, in a attempt to preserve his precious game ROMs.

The point I do agree on is that a drive minimally turned or or left on, will likely fare better than one continually [edit: infrequently] turned on and off.

Edit: All electronics suffer their greatest stress on power on.

[Swedaniel]

Understand. But you didn't address the question gamemaniaco...errrr...patrion87 asked.

How many months can a notebook HDD remain unused without damaging its mechanics and data? to keep its mechanics healthy and the data turn on the HDD every day?

The real answer is that there's no definitive answer. Only situational, anecdotal experiences like yours and the others that in no way is indicative what anyone else may experience. Especially when it comes to data integrity. Data on a drive that's working right now, may fail in the next second or be good for another ten years.

Since you're new here, gamemaniaco, patrion87 and a half dozen other names under which he's been banned, has a serious problem accepting any answer given him, in a attempt to preserve his precious game ROMs.

The point I do agree on is that a drive minimally turned or or left on, will likely fare better than one continually [edit: infrequently] turned on and off.

Edit: All electronics suffer their greatest stress on power on.

Yeah i think there is no answer to that one that lead to any good things in life for other people that will meet up with an person to recive such an answer.. For an buisness to sell an laptop which after the purchase the buyer ask for an specific number, such as this question, once an answer is given they build an legal case against the store who sold the laptop, and the disk has not yet even broke, and they can allso come return to the forum blaming this person, who gave the number on how long the hard disk would last! Seem kinda stupid and un-responsible to give the answer when it seem to commonly lead to an disturbing customer/person that turn into an book keeper for how long the disk should last to start some sort of case if it would break.. simple as it is, is just to call the store and say it broke to see you get an new one, no need to turn into an disturbing bookeeper preparing notes and legal case against the store in case it breaks, and since some people do, no answer is coming from here that help motivate such people into becoming disturbing to other people! (I dont think patrion87 is such an person, still im not taking any chances).

Most of my knowledge about hard drive disks come from Western Digital and some approved school systems (IT Technichian), and with all of this personal experiene with repairing, exchanging harddrives, formatting, installing windows etc throughout 25 years!

They tend to never break but all of a sudden one of them breaks after a few hours even if it was brand new while some can keep ticking even with rust on them!

Edit: And yeah, sometimes people do post same quesion over and over! Could be for any reason! Maybe they feel they got scammed and tricked ellsewhere from someone and realise this when an other person in this forum give an other answer, now maybe asking the question again to see if more people say the same thing!

[usually_quiet]

Edit: And yeah, sometimes people do post same quesion over and over! Could be for any reason! Maybe they feel they got scammed and tricked ellsewhere from someone and realise this when an other person in this forum give an other answer, now maybe asking the question again to see if more people say the same thing!

At best, this person suffers from a mental health problem that makes him obsess about finding a consumer product that will work perfectly every time for permanent data storage, which he'll never find because it doesn't exist. At worst, it's a deliberate attempt to be annoying.

[Tom Saurus]

Hard drives can fail anytime. They say it is best to make at least two back ups. It is nice to read that hard drives can last for years. I hope mine keep working and I am hoping to buy some larger capacity hard drives some time in the future.

[Tom Saurus]

I just got a Seagate 4 TB portable hard drive. I hope it works for many years to come. This is my first drive beyond the 2 TB capacity.

[Subtitles]

I just got a Seagate 4 TB portable hard drive. I hope it works for many years to come. This is my first drive beyond the 2 TB capacity.

I hope you are right. I had bad experiences with Seagate hard disks over the years and promised myself to never buy them again. My advise is to do regular backups just in case.

[Tom Saurus]

So far so good with the 4 TB hard drive. It is just the perfect size for sitting on top of the Beelink Mini Computer. Hopefully it keeps working for many years to come.

[Hitsu]

Hard drives can fail anytime. They say it is best to make at least two back ups. It is nice to read that hard drives can last for years. I hope mine keep working and I am hoping to buy some larger capacity hard drives some time in the future.

Totally agree, on top of that I would also suggest keeping the second backup/drive in an alternative location. What good is having 2 or 3 backups in the house if the house burns down.

Cloud storage is great, but often its cheaper/faster/easier to get a second hard drive.

[thecoalman]

If you were going to invest in multiple drives I would suggest RAID1 storage. It's not a true backup because a corrupt file is corrupted on both drives and since they are physically in the same machine they are both subject to something like power surge.

That said it will almost always prevent the most common loss of data which is sudden drive failure. Your "backup" is real time and as a small bonus it can increase read times. If a disk fails you'll know it immediately and you can take the appropriate steps to preserve data on the good one like popping in another disk to rebuild the RAID1 array.

As far as how long a HDD can last siting on a shelf they are filled with an inert gas. Otherwise the platters themselves would oxidize. This also prevents oxidation of any lubricants which is the primary reason they will get sticky. I have no idea how long but it's probably a considerable length of time.