Should I pop them in an old server? Is there an appliance that just supplies power? Is there a self-hosted thing I can monitor disks which I have 0 access usage for and don't want connected to anything but want to keep "live"
I have a HDD that was 17+ years since it last powered on. I dug it out recently to re-establish some memories, and discovered that it still reads. But of course you need to take care of them well, put them in an Anti-Static Bag or something similar, and make sure the storage environment is dry.
It's not prefect, but at least you don't have to struggle that much maintaining SSDs.
Sometimes I come back to my old post and feel the "What The Fuck" in all cap.
When I was typing that, my brain jumped ahead thinking maybe I should also tell the fact that the data don't actually last forever, which distracted me and there you go, "way lasts longer" instead of "lasts way longer".
I use them for working with old unmounted hard drives or for cloning drives for family members before swapping them. But they would probably work for just supplying power too?
The one I use the most is an 18 year old Rosewill RCW-608.
I don't know if the firmware/controller would do what it needs to do with only power connected. I wonder if there's some way to use SMART value tracking to tell? Like if power on hours increments surely the controller was doing the things it needs to do?