Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFluff
Not really, no. By far the most common failure reason for HDD's is mechanical failure. Usually it's the motor that spins the platters that wears out after a certain number of spin-up cycles, but it can also be caused by the stepper motors that drive the read/write heads wearing out (usually accompanied by various clicking noises) or even a head crash (the read/write heads getting in contact with the rotating platter). If kept unused, a HDD will most likely keep the magnetization of its platters for just about as long as a tape will, i.e. around 25 years if stored properly.
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Having properly magnetized platters won't matter much if the parts that spin it up seize
Wear isn't the only thing that screws up the drive; anything with lubricated components won't like sitting dormant long periods of time. I've seen this firsthand at my office when we went to pull financial data from years ago. ~75% of the drives were useless. Granted, drives nowadays may be more resilient but I'd still not store long term w/o spinning them up now and again.