I'm putting together a small file server. It's only purpose is to run WinXP and control a RAID 1 array. It will sit on the end of a cat 5 cable somewhere (basement?) and by mapping the big drives, I can swap/save files in and out all day long. The RAID drives are new and large (for me, anyhow).

The drive I want to use to hold the OS is one I picked up earlier in the year. It's 30GB (which is more than enough room) but - it has a date of 1999 on it. However, it was actually new in the box, and had never been taken out of the anti-static wrapper. In other words, it had never been touched by human hands or had power applied to it for over a dozen years since it left the factory.

I plugged it in and it came right up. Seems fine.

I don't want to have to worry that this old disk will crap out on me, but since it's essentially new, should I be worried? Anyone have experience with this situation?

Hard drives always fail. Those that haven't yet will one day. But, if the drive has been stored in a cool, dry place for 12 years and never used, then I'd consider it new.

Might I suggest you run Ubuntu on your file server instead of XP? Linux has built in support for RAID arrays and tends to run better on older systems since it has less overhead. Also, I daresay it will be more stable than XP.

In this very specific case, your drive is new (you have 0h of use towards a given MTBF) but you kept it stored for some years. Your main risk right now is that something happened to the lubrication on the moving parts. I suggest you use it for a few days, starting/stoping it a few times. If it keep working after these few days, I would think it really is as good as new.

give it a week and if it's still running, you'll be fine. Since it's an array, i would just want to make sure that the drive speeds are matched, otherwise it can be worse than no raid.

and i wouldn't use XP, even if it's what you have laying around. Use a *nix turnkey NAS distro. www.freenas.org is a favorite and rock-solid...

+1 for FreeNAS and don't bother with your old hard disk, run it off a USB stick (2GB min). you can pick up a 4GB stick for $4 @Microcenter. Set it up and then clone your USB stick to a backup USB stick. If it fails just swap out.

I do this for FreeNAS and ESX servers, works great!

Actually, the raid is based on a Promise raid controller. It's raid 1 with matched disks. It's only purpose is to provide off-cpu storage for physical security and (almost) assured availability of anything stored there. Because all the smarts are in the purpose-built card, the OS talking to it is less of an issue.

Of course, I have to make sure I put stuff there in the first place, but that's more a matter of discipline than technology.

I do have a home-made backup system I wrote several years ago that handled everything automatically. In those days, I was using Lantastic-Z (getting drivers for NIC's and getting them working was problematical back then) and manually synchronizing the drives. Files were a lot smaller then, too. It worked. I guess I should update it ... when I get around to it.

Back in the olden days (maybe 20 years ago), lubrication getting old could be a problem, but I haven't see that in years now.

I can remember customers who had big full height 5 1/4 drives that wouldn't spin up after being shut down over night. The motors didn't have enough torque to overcome the hardened lube. Manually rotating the drive around the disk axis would break the disk loose and then they would spin up and work. Of course, the recommendation at that point was to not shut down the drive until everything important was backed up, and preferably the drive replaced.