HDD shelf life?

[stvmor]

I am in the process of backing up approx. 1Terrabyre of video. It's all very special family stuff so I want to keep it as full AVI clips on hard drive. So far I have filled 2 WD 250 SE16's and started on two more but it seems a bit daft to leave them 'plugged in'.
So, to the question: Are HDD's, and their data, best stored powered up or not?

 

[VeNT]

not, but make sure to do error checking etc on the drives before you store them.
they ARE a magnetic storage device so will eventualy lose their data (long time) so maybe using some kinda backup prog that saves them in a compressed and checked format would be better?

 

[wizardmaxx]

Personally id encode those vids to xvid format and keep a seperate backup on another hdd just in case. Also u may want to store the hdds in say a tupperware with some silica gel to keep everything nice and dry.