3
1
I have a Seagate hard drive that I purchased in 2011 but not even taken out of its original packaging. This one was to be used as a spare disk, in case one of two similar drives in my RAID enclosure went bad.
Will it still be usable after 3-4 years of non-use, and yes, will I get the same kind of life out of it? Is there any metric such as this that is available from the manufacturer?
"but not even taken out of its original packaging" -- That's a mistake. You could be SOL if it's DOA or experience "infantile mortality" (i.e. the "bathtub curve" of reliability). For every HDD I acquire, it is powered up and the Extended S.M.A.R.T. Test is performed as a quick burn-in step before it is used or set aside. – sawdust – 2014-06-02T19:20:34.347