From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Sep 6 13:36:58 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2110C16A41F for ; Tue, 6 Sep 2005 13:36:58 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from numard@meijome.net) Received: from sigma.octantis.com.au (ns2.octantis.com.au [207.44.189.124]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A295B43D45 for ; Tue, 6 Sep 2005 13:36:57 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from numard@meijome.net) Received: (qmail 21108 invoked from network); 6 Sep 2005 23:36:57 +1000 Received: from 203-173-33-12.dyn.iinet.net.au (HELO ?192.168.13.3?) (203.173.33.12) by sigma.octantis.com.au with (DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA encrypted) SMTP; 6 Sep 2005 23:36:57 +1000 Message-ID: <431D9B74.7000409@meijome.net> Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 23:36:52 +1000 From: Norberto Meijome User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Questions Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: [OT] Life expectancy of powered down hard drives.... X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:36:58 -0000 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). 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... Does this affect SCSI drives? I suppose it would be more likely to affect desktop-quality IDE / SATA drives... Any insights will be much appreciated. Best regards, Beto