Like many people I have back up drives. Some of these are archive drives which just store images as a back up to my main storage system.

My question is as these drives are just stored on a shelf, and to date (touch wood) have not been needed. Is it a good idea every 6 months or so to plug them in a power them up to exercise the drive, and to ensure all is working OK. Or are they happy enough just sitting on the shelf.

Thanks
John C

A backup isn't a backup if the data isn't accessible. Power them up and run a scandisk on them. I've one that has developed a nasty whine between powerups. Clearly not long for this world. I keep a backup on it but it doesn't count. (Ie I like to have two backups. That one is a third.)

I do power-up my backup HDs on a regular basis. On a couple of separate occasions, 2 of my HDs refused to start-up. I sent them for disagnostic, knowing that I had multiple backups. The repair company said that they were dead and if I wanted to rescue any data I would have to contact DriveSavers or a similar companys.

So, test your backup HDs regularly and have multiple backups. When you have a suspicious drive (weird noise, slow to startup, etc.), get a new one ASAP.

Good advice. Thanks

Images are backed up on to 2 drives and DVD's I don't think I'm too paranoid

You have to prepare for hardware failure, media failure and brain failure.

I had hardware failure (lost a disk) and media failure (not all my DVDs were good) and compounded it with brain failure. (I destroyed my last copy of a file because I couldn't tell up from down, left from right and source from destination after I powered on my external drives in reverse order.)

I lost my favorite image when that happened.

I've also had the issue (regular backup and not photo backup related) where I destroyed one copy of the data intentionally (I was reconfiguring a drive) and then had multiple hardware failures and media failures.

I believe scientists recorded the sound of that expletive half way around the Earth in Siberia.

May I suggest that you both investigate on-line backup services such as Mozy?