Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveHardeman
Hmmmm, what are your thoughts on this? What if I go get a mess of 100GB ext HD's and just archive like A-E on one, F-I on one. Anyone have experience with aging external harddrives? Am I setting myself up for failure if I happen to need something off of that drive 2,3,4,10 years after then last time it's been plugged in?
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Unplugging an external HD and storing it for long periods of time is asking for trouble. Especially with newer drives. You have two things to consider, the physical moving parts, and the magnetic media.
The moving parts are designed to do just that, move. The are not designed to be unplugged and left stagnant. Also, there was a note about storing them at proper temperature and such...this is important too. For extended off-line storage, use media that are designed for it.
Stored Magnetic media will eventually fail, period. One of the things about a drive that is on-line and active; the data gets refreshed on occasions and the drives have built-in checks for data integrity. This is crucial. Being taken off-line cripples the drives ability to protect the data.