[TriLUG] do hard disks have a shelf life?

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

For home use I replace disks after about 2yrs and after 
checking them with badblocks and smartctl, put them on the 
shelf for projects. The disks are labelled with the date of 
first use, their read and write rate and the date of the 
last badblocks and smartctl run

In the last 4 weeks or so, I put into action, 5 disks 3-8yrs 
old, that haven't been used for maybe 2-5 yrs. Everyone of 
them failed within a week. One of them is a 1.5TByte disk 
that the highest 300G of sectors (is this inside or 
outside?) is unwritable. Others failed with clicks of death, 
bad lba's according to smartctl or just not booting.

It's hard to imagine that electronics would go bad in 2-5 
yrs sitting on a shelf. Does the surface of the disk degrade 
with time?

Thanks Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!