[Thinkpad] Portable HD

[Steve Carter]

Drive manufacturers sometimes/often/rarely specify a 
period of time they rate their drives for total inactivity. 

One issue might be the coating of lubricant on the disk platters.  
The normal disk operation helps to insure an even coating.  

I seem to recall IBM specifying about a year of non-operation 
for the 10K SCSI drive I bought _several_ years ago now. 
It ran OK when I finally got around to installing it 2-3 years 
(or more) later. Maybe I got lucky. I stored it flat, 
although I don't know if that was significant. 

 -- Steve 
    
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Wd, 4 Apr 2007, "Allan Ballard" <aballard at ix.netcom.com> wrote, in part:
>
>How reliable over time are remote drives that have been in storage?
>
>I ask because I stored a Thinkpad drive in a safe place once upon a time
>only to find that it had failed when I tried to use it.