Had a storage machine carrying some important data that’s been in cold storage for a year. Not too worried about the hdds, but thinking the SSDs could use a good once over to make sure none of the files have decayed. Not really sure how to do that though, was thinking of maybe running a virus scanner over the whole thing as that should force the system to look at every file, and maybe the ssd/hdd error correction will make sure everything is up to snuff. Any advice? Is there a better way?
System is running windows so some Linux tools are trickier to fire up without creating some kind of live disc or something.
Back up as soon as possible everything you care about from there, starting with the small stuff. Then next time when you have “some important data” have multiple copies of it and check them periodically.
Yeah that’s kinda basic data preservation practice.
The ssds are just windows and installed programs. No point to making a backup, but I do have a system image backed up to hdd anyway.
I more just want to make sure they’re in the best shape possible after booting up, and wondered if anyone had any guidance on that.
Probably full read (like a badblocks in Linux or HD Tune Pro in Windows) should check everything on the physical level (note that all storage nowadays has checksums and even recovery data itself, this is why mostly everyone can ignore all the checksumming file systems without mostly everything falling apart).
Not much you can do after it’s been storage. Boot it up. It will work or it wont.
Should be fine imho. Going a year without power shouldn’t be an issue or else tons of people would have issues worldwide