Hard Drive question

[Aaron Hucker]

Wondering if anyone knows of a program (for mac) that will help maintain the magnetic properties of a drive. We have a bunch of drives that are no longer attached to computers that we use for archival storage, but as of recently, we've been experiencing a few of them that are no longer mounting. I've heard that drives if they do not read and write for more than 3 months they can start loosing data.

Any suggestions aside from manually mounting and copying each of the drives.

On a side note, anyone know of a good 12+ bay raid enclosure? It doesn't have to be fast, just support 2TB drives.

[Michael Romano]

I've never heard of a 3 month lifespan on magnetic media, but I have had drives just die from sitting on the shelf for ages.

You could try checksumming all the data with a utility like R3D Data manager. It won't check the PHYSICAL material but it will tell you if data is going south.

I currently use Caldigit HDPro's in RAID 5 with 1.5TB drives (Supports 2TB). Its fast but not cheap. Try searching Google for reviews, there are tons of options and many DIY which can save massive amounts of money.

You might want to look into SATA port multipliers. Not for the technically faint of heart but when super fast isn't a concern and budget is, there are good options there.

NOTE - I know someone is going to chime in about how fast their port multiplier setup is, I believe you, I do, but there are scaled back solutions in that realm that might be right for Aaron.

[a kines]

If a drive is unusable after three months of sitting on a shelf, it's not typical. If you've had this experience something else is going on than just "memory wear"tm

There is an issue with drives that haven't been spun up for a while but it's mechanical.
Rotational mechanisms can seize up without use but I've never seen one seize up after three months. I have seen drives sit on shelves for almost a year and still work. Granted, I had told the client to spin them up every few months but they forgot and sheepishly brought them in to get an update on a project but they still worked.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

3 months is an extremely short time frame.

I would just buy a SATA dock and pop them in every 6 months if you're really worried.

I regularly pop in drives more than a year old without trouble.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Hard drives are not really designed to sit unused for extended lengths of time... But that means a few years. Data can also deteriorate over time even on drives that are being used if the data remains static and never re-written. This leads to data corruption on old drives after a decade or so of sitting about.

That said, Gavin's advice is really the best way to go about it. Spin them up once or twice a year and verify all the data. Keep your data moving, forging new copies, overlapping backup sets, etc.. Data backup and archival is more a strategy than a technology.

[George Tsai]

Yea 3 month definetly not right. longest I've pulled an old hd off my self is at least two years and all the data was fine. I have a lot of old hd and never seemed to have this problem.

[Aaron Hucker]

3 months is the earliest I've heard of, sorry for causing confusion.

Like Jeff said, I know I've got to keep the data moving, reading doesn't really cut it. But I've rarely got an actual need to write those files again. Anyone know of an automated program to re-write files to keep the drives fresh?