Doubt storage drives

[patrion87]

I have Asus internal Sata DVD drives stored away and I know that these drives have mechanical parts, lubrication, motor, lens

How many times a year is it necessary to energize these drives to maintain good health of the mechanical parts, lubrication, lens?

[aurgathor]

Moving parts of optical drives should be lubricated for life and there is not much need to power those ON. One component type that may degrade over time is electrolytic caps, but that's mostly an issue with old equipment (ie. tube TVs) where many caps are of a much higher voltage. With those, current limited power supplies could be used to individually reform aged caps. However, that doesn't really apply at all to optical writers whose power is usually +12V (motor) and +5V (electronics). Many DVD writers are $50 or under nowadays (and less for readers, but BD writers can be much more expensive), so I wouldn't worry too much. But if you really worry about it, you could power it on for an hour or so once every couple of years.

As per *my* experience, the #1 killer of optical drives is dust. I did un-dust some drives many years ago (my first CD writer was over $500!), but with the current prices that doesn't make much sense any more.