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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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No, I'm not saying replace the drive annually. That would, indeed, be dumb. I'm saying copy the data back and forth between hard drives that are kept offline.
You'd be better off keeping the drives spun up. I've had more drive failures from drives not in use than powered up.
Mechanical stuff is just like people, it doesn't like sitting around doing nothing. Just like it's difficult for us to get moving after sitting for a long time, mechanical things struggle too. There's things like stiction in high-precision moving surfaces.
I don't trust drives that have sat around, I assume they're dead or at least the data corrupted.
You don't keep it completely powered off; you power it on occasionally, but don't keep it constantly running.
Parts that are constantly moving wear, and will eventually fail. Things that are never used can seize. You want to have a happy medium. But that's also why you want to have multiple mechanical drives that you're cycling through; if any single device fails, you still have your data backed up.