> Sorry, but I have to disagree on this one. Hard drives have too many > moving parts to trust after being that old. Especially if they've > sat around unused. Time kills things with moving parts :) Plus, old > drives may not provide SMART data, which helps you detect errors > sooner.
as a mechanical engineer, i have to disagree with your disagreement :-) time doesn't kill things with moving parts, cycles kill things with moving parts. movement cycles, temperature cycles, whatever. a hard disk that's been sitting idle for a couple of years is no closer to death now than it was two years ago, assuming it was stored reasonably. modern disks have -substantially- higher storage densities than their older siblings, which require much tighter physical tolerances in order to operate. as such, a trifling deviation that doesn't adversely affect an older disk will render a new disk worthless. you can only push the cost/capacity envelope so far without affecting quality and reliability, and unfortunately people keep voting (with their wallets) for cheap rather than reliable. again, just my $.02. jason -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
