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by justin66 4142 days ago
> I used to pull backup drives and shelve them, but their life spans are radically lowered if left unpowered on a shelf for 6 months and then replugged into a machine at a later time.

That's kind of mysterious. All things being equal, they should simply experience less wear (no wear, really, other than oxidation and corrosion) than the same drive which has been left plugged in.
1 comments
bluedino 4141 days ago
We had the same problem with WD Greens. We'd write a backup to the drive in a dock each week, then store the drives as monthly backups. About 6% of the drives failed when we plugged them back in.
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justin66 4139 days ago
I'd be more inclined to blame damage during handling, but only because I cannot think of an alternate explanation. There is no constant refreshing of data that happens with a disk drive (to my knowledge) such that a drive being left plugged in should be more reliable than one on the shelf.

I would be happy to be instructed here, though.

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