What to do with full backup disks

[sachin]

Hi all,

I have 4 mechanical external HDDs that I use to backup my huge collection of home movies and pictures. Two of these are 1.5TB in size and 2 are 3TB in size. The two 1.5TB disks are full to the brim (save for a negligable 313MB on each of them) and contain exactly the same data as each other, in other words I use them in a RAID 1 fashion. The two 3TB disks are completely empty and I bought them becuase the two 1.5 became full and I intend to slowly fill these 3TB ones in the same way, again by copying the data to both of them, just in case one drive fails. Now, my quesion is this. What shall I do with the two 1.5TB disks? Should I leave them connected to the computer and let them load each time I load Windows? Or should I pack them away somewhere? If I pack them away somewhere, then should I bring them out now and again to run diagnostics on them to see if they are working ok? What's the best thing to do? The reason I am concerned is that I have read somewhere that it has been shown that those hard drives tend to fail most that are under- or over-used. Since these two 1.5TB drives are full, they will now be very underused, so I wonder what I must do to make sure they don't fail and if they do that I get to know about it. What should be done with full disks?

Thanks,

Sachin

[Keatah]

Leaving them connected to the system obviously puts them at the same risk as other disks, virus, power surge, user error.

I store my long term backups offline, and power them up once a year or so. Perhaps re-write the info every 5 years maybe.

Having said that, I have an HDD from 1986 that has never been refreshed, powered up once every 10 years. Seems fully functional.

[drc]

Well, if you're like most people full backup disks should be promptly dropped, or lost, or thrown out of a moving vehicle, or accidentally formatted, or used as decoration at the bottom of a fish tank, etc etc

[Keatah]

Be sure and get money's worth, dual purpose them as a door stop.

[poehere]

Puppies love to chew on them when getting their adult teeth. No seriously If you have two back up disk what do you think you should do with them. If you want to use the 3TB as your new backup this one is fine. But then if they fail you should try and keep the other two so you do not loose so much of your data. Put them in a static free bag and store them in a very safe place where they will not take a shock or get damaged. Then one day when one of your wonderful WD takes a dump you have your data and do not need to call one of us.

[sachin]

I would do the same. I would run MHDD on it every now and then (1 year) and copy the info to a new drive from 5 to 5 years.

Put some silica gel inside an anti-static bag with the drive sealed inside too. It will prevent moisture too.

What's MHDD? Can you actually buy silica gel, I only thought you got those little packets when you buy a new pair of shoes. Never seen an anti-static bag in my life. Will look into it.