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I have a Desktop computer, which I booted up after 5-6 months.

While using ir, updating Anti-Virus and other software. Voidtool's Everything.exe reported that there's some indexing problem in a folder, I was busy so I just OKed it.

Later I discovered that folder was reduced to 0 byte file. The system has 2 internal HDDs

  • 250GB for 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate OS
  • 1TB for media and important stuff

My questions:

  1. I will be leaving for a long time again, what can I do to stop this aging process?
  2. Is it advisable to physically remove the 1TB HDD (until I can buy an Ex-HDD), if so what precautions should I take in storing it?

P.S. My home is kept clean, and no power outages are experienced

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  • Run a check disk on that drive.
    – Moab
    Feb 15, 2016 at 22:42

1 Answer 1

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  1. You can't stop the aging process, but it is not as fast as you believe. If you're not leaving for 5+ years, you shouldn't be worried. Backup is always advisable though. And you should unplug your machine while away for so long (saves also a bit of energy).
  2. There's no need to take it out. Also, there really is no difference between an internal and an external HDD. It is the same thing, just put inside a different thing. Storing is always good in a cool dry place. Cool: the colder the temperature, the slower is any chemical reaction, usually 2-3 times slower per 10 centigrade. This means less corrosion and less likelihood of failure. Dry: also helps minimizing degradation. However, both do not affect the degradation of the magnetization.

For your lost files, was there actually something in this folder? It could just be caused by updating the machine. I have personally left a computer for more than a year without booting it and some of its data was untouched for more than 3 years, still there were no problems discovered.

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