Hard drive failure

[ap70]

Hi,

I "had" two back-up hard drivers 300Gbs and 1Tb.
Both sitting carefully quiet inside my drawer for six months.
Last week end tried to turn one and it was dead, for my surprise tried to turn the second one and guess what....died too.

Both Western Caviar Green.

So my questions are;

Can I kill a hard drive just by leting it seat horizontaly in a drawer?
What is the safest way to back up my data?

I am really scared how you can be cheated by thinking you have a back up.

Any ideas?

 

[Hawkeye22]

Did you store them in antistatic bags or did you put them naked next to your wool socks? ESD can kill electronics.

 

[ap70]

One of them was, the other one wasn't but well protected (?!).
I guess this is the only explanation for what happened.
I opened both to check and on the first one the "head" was stuck right in the middle of the disk.
The second one the read was stuck all the way off the disk to the right.

Both have that "click"noise going every second.

Sad.


I guess the best way is to keep back ups inside the PC 24hs spinning???

 

[ap70]

Best answer selected by ap70.