I recently found my old LaCie external hard drive that I bought back in 2005 to store my music collection. It survived Hurricane Katrina and has been in storage for two decades, untouched but stored safely. Now that I want to see if it still works and upload some mp3s to a cloud service, I'm worried: if I plug it in and turn it on after so many years, will it get damaged or destroy itself?
5 Answers
Only one way to find out! Just make sure to copy everything over to a new drive as soon as you power it up. You don’t want to risk losing any of that precious music.
You gotta plug it in sooner or later! Waiting won't help anything. In fact, the longer you wait, the harder it could be to find the right cables, especially if it uses FireWire like many 2005 models. Powering it on isn't likely to hurt it, but do keep in mind that the chances of it working decrease the longer you wait. I'd recommend getting those files copied over to another drive as soon as possible, since you can get a decent 1TB external drive for around $60 nowadays. Plus, remember to follow the 3-2-1 backup strategy for any important files. Good luck!
Most likely, if it doesn’t power on, the power supply could be the issue, which can be pretty finicky after all this time. If it buzzes when you plug it in, be prepared for data recovery tactics. And definitely remember, if you're backing it up, count that new drive as your primary copy, not the old one!
It's like a surgery for your music collection! I've got an old drive full of music I ripped from CDs too. If it powers on, just make sure you have a backup drive ready to transfer everything immediately. Once it’s safe, you can let the nostalgia kick in.
These old LaCies are surprisingly durable! I have several ancient hard drives tucked away, and they still work fine when I power them up. Just handle it carefully and make sure to back up your files as soon as you can.
Yeah, that's my plan! Thanks for the advice!