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I have some disconnected hard disks (that is, they have not been connected to a power source for years). You know, if you do not use inkjet printers, the ink gets hardened and blocks the nozzle and ruins the printer. Of course, HDD's are not printers, but they contain moving parts. So, if I do not power them on for a long time, don't the moving parts or some sort of lubricant get hardened and won't spin up properly?

In short, is there any need to periodically power on and use disconnected disks (like once a year), or can we leave disconnected disks powered-off without using for years?

Damn Vegetables
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1 Answers1

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Frankly, it all depdends on the drive.

I had some unopened hard drives that would have some hard time spinning for the first time five years after I bought them (same day, same batch, only had one of both doing that, both perfectly stored), but also some 25+ years old drives that would still perfectly works right out of the bat after being unpowered for 20+ years.

For mechanical hard drives, it's all about the lubricant breaking down even if it's "dry lubed". But it looks like the newer the drive, the weaker they are about that.

You may have also have bit rot on mechanical hard drives, but it doesn't happen often. Do note that I did have some overly used mechanical drives that would aggressively bit rot after a few months.

But, better safe than sorry though (think btrfs with dup and ECC RAM for example to mitigate bit rot).

SSDs on the other hand are on another whole level of degrading over time. Bit rot is really a thing with those.

JEDEC do expect OEM to make SSDs that will hold data for at least 10 years only when they are brand new, but this downs to only 1 single year or even less (depending on writing temperature and offline storage temperature) for drives that have reached their maximum TBW, which is mostly around 100TB for consumer ones (that's very little if you consider web browsing caching and more and more bloated software that uses more RAM... and swap).

However, I did have old SD cards that could hold data for more than 15 years unpowered. But I haven't tried them for bit rot, and I do know that I didn't used them a lot, which the latter certainly helped.

If your concern is about long term-archival. Mechanical hard drives are still the best after archival-grade optical disks (normal ones are garbage for that, SSDs that aren't often used may even outperform them out) and of course, tape.

As a rule of thumbs, and to finally answer your question, you should power mechanical drives every three years, but to be extra safe once a year would be the best.

For SSDs or anything flash-based, that would be every month if you don't know how much TBW they got, just because of bit rot.

As usual, your mileage may vary. But again, better be safe than sorry.

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