On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 06:43:16PM -0500, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: > Hi, > > I have a 500GB Western Digital hard drive that I bought in 2012 but it has > never been unpacked and has been sitting on the shelf all this time. How > long can it be considered 'new'? Is it safe to use? So, what could go wrong with a hard drive in storage? Thermal noise could flip some bits on the plater, but that's going to be rare and, with no data on the disk, shouldn't matter a great deal. People talk about lubricants evaporating and causing the motor and/or head to seize, but remember that the drive is designed to run hotter and harder than it will be in storage. Magnetic fields or ESD could damage the control circuitry, but if the drive is still in it's original packaging, then that will protect it from most of what could happen in transit. So, in my estimation, a hard drive should be good to go after 10-20 years on the shelf. Beyond that, it may be more hassle finding a suitable computer to run the drive on than it's worth. At 2 years old, the drive should still be fresh as it was when bought.
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