Preserving cold-spare disks.
I'm building a 5-disk DIY NAS and plan on purchasing a total of 6/7 drives to have 1/2 just as cold-spares should the need arise for a quick replacement due to a failure. I plan on using Raid Z2 with TrueNAS.
I'm aware disks suffer from magnetic degradation when sectors remain unchanged over extended periods of time. I'm not worried about bit rot since the disks will remain unused for as long as they are not needed for a replacement. However in the interest of keeping them as healthy as possible with regular "maintenance", how would you recommend this be achieved?
I plan on:
- Doing a simple windows chkdsk /b to do a basic scan of the disk
- Doing a surface scan to see about any problem sectors
- Doing an extended/long SMART test
- Using something like SpinRite fresh writes all sectors of the disk. (or other tools with similar outcomes)
- Store the disks in a cool and dry environment (perhaps insulated/sealed-off like in a case/container)
- Repeat from step 1 every 2-3 years
What are your thoughts and suggestions?