Storing HDDs

[Tobias Straka]

Hey guys, I guess like everybody, I had like a ton of drives floating around "naked" lately, so I started looking at solutions to store them and found this solution:

http://www.raidsonic.de/en/pages/products/external_cases.php?we_objectID=5494

Basically, it's just a plastic box where a 3.5'' HDD fits in very nicely. I bought 8 of them and I'm pretty happy with it.

What do you use for storing drives that you don't use on a daily basis?

[Craig Meadows]

I have a ton of stuff on a Mac Pro I am backing up right now. I use the Newertech "Guardian Maximus" in a mirrored raid available from OWC. Have 3 of these guys at the moment. 2 hd case hard wired as a mirror for protection. With that said, a couple of them are full so, I put a BlueRay burner in one of our MacPro's and my plan is to make two BlueRay data discs for each clients stuff. Using Toast to burn the discs. Shelf life should be good enough and with error checking I will keep my fingers crossed that all the little bits are good and in order. Anyone doing something similar?

[Michael Romano]

Just make sure you have 2 copies of each of those in different places. I've been burned in the past by shelving drives, even in such cases. The last one that went, ironically, I pulled off the shelf to backup and got the clicks of death :(

[Stephen Strangways]

I initially looked at the Hudzee cases, but shipping to Canada was just too expensive for my tastes.
http://www.hudzee.com/

So, I went searching for something I could get from a Canadian distributor, and ended up finding the Wiebetech DriveBoxes:
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php

You just have to make sure to get them snapped shut all the way around, something that the Hudzee design might do better, but I've never seen one of those in person, and the Wiebetechs are working well enough for me.

[Stephen Strangways]

Oh, and for everyone that is worried about stiction causing problems with drives that have sat on a shelf for a long time... I was worried too, so I decided to fire up and test an old computer that hasn't been switched on in 3.5 years. Two hard drives have been just sitting in it all that time, so I tested them with Spinrite, and they passed with flying colours.

So, I figure it can't hurt to fire your drives up every six months as preventative maintenance, but I won't be losing any sleep over it if I don't.

That being said, every single drive that I work with or store long-term has an exact duplicate that's kept in another location. You can never be too careful, and because I can't afford to lose time restoring a backup, I've always got an exact duplicate of in-use drives up-to-date and ready to go within seconds.