[Coco] Powering up our retro systems

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 26 January 2020 09:31:54 rietveld rietveld wrote:

> A lot of us have a backup coco; and maybe a backup to that backup
>
> How often do you power up the spare equipment?
>
> How often should we turn it on?
>
> How long should we leave it on?

Because my system has hard drives, I never turn them off. Stopping and 
starting a hard drive is the worst abuse you can subject them to. I made 
the mistake of shutting it down to let a contractor install some water 
control stuff in the basement and it wound up being several months 
before I got all the demolition debris cleaned up enough it was safe to 
power it up again, and had to use a rubber hammer on the corner of the 
drive casting to get them started again, stiction had welded the heads 
to the disks. But these 2 drives are both seagate scsi 1GB'ers that 
started life in 91 or so in an amiga 2000, so they are going on 30 yo.
With over a million power on hours each and no bad sectors yet, I think 
thats testimony enough to just keep them spinning, so they are, right 
now.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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