[TriLUG] do hard disks have a shelf life?

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 6 Sep 2012 13:20:48 -0700 (PDT), Joseph Mack NA3T said:
> 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

As a former stereo repairman, if I had to guess on the cause of this
situation, I'd guess it would be the motor bearings. After awhile, the
lubricant on motor bearings hardens. I would think this would happen
*especially* if the motor were not used for years.

SteveT


Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
                          *  http://twitter.com/stevelitt
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance