I want to know if computer components can be damaged if they stay a long time off?
For example, if a good working PC stay off for some years, this can damage for example the motherboard or RAM ... or other parts?
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3laptop batteries...i know they shouldnt be deep discharged however i dont know how long that would take to happen– Perdi EstaquelCommented Jul 8 at 0:01
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The coin cell battery backing the CMOS RAM eventually runs down, but I don't think that could be considered "damage". The environment that the parts are stored in (i.e., temperature and humidity swings) also will play into the equation.– spuckCommented Jul 8 at 20:53
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1@spuck Damage from old battery backup battery leakage is a significant problem with some old systems.– Russell McMahonCommented Jul 9 at 3:33
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@PerdiEstaquel I have this exact question for instance with old tablets that I have lying around that seem to discharge their batteries after a week. Should I go to the trouble of periodically charging them half full or full?– MichaelCommented Jul 9 at 9:50
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5 Answers
Yes, specifically electrolytic capacitors can “deform” (basically short out) if left unpowered for a number of years (see https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/8794/do-electrolytic-capacitors-have-a-limited-shelf-life). These are used in power converters, primarily inside power supplies, motherboards and graphic cards.
This is primarily a problem in older and lower cost equipment.
It is also possible for flash memory chips to “decay” if left unpowered for a long period of time, especially in a hot environment. This could affect BIOS chips, SSDs and USB memory. However, I have never seen this happen.
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7FWIW, I have seen plenty (specially low cost) NAND flash based storage devices with symptoms I can only explain by charge leakage from NAND cells and those were indeed confirmed left unpowered over longer periods of time. Commented Jul 6 at 23:22
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4ok , but what about for example a new mainboard that remain unsold on the store.Why it doesn't contain an "expiry" date that can alert customers for this problem you've described ? Commented Jul 6 at 23:56
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7Capacitor aging typically takes decades. By the time these things are issues, the "new" motherboard would be so old nobody would consider it new. ("New old stock") Ram changes styles and goes out of production faster than these issues become a problem. Commented Jul 7 at 0:25
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3@DonikaDonika No one is going to bother to write "best before 2070" on their packaging. Retailers have limited shelf (or warehouse) space and would likely throw away old stock to make space for new inventory that it can actually sell long before capacitor aging becomes an issue. Unless you're buying something from the early 2000s or earlier you don't need to worry about capacitor aging (and the later part of that range is only really because of the capacitor plague). Commented Jul 7 at 10:56
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1Charge leakage in flash memory is definitely a real thing, it’s quite literally the reason that flash storage is write limited. But it also does have something to do with how many writes have happened, and the flash storage on your motherboard is not going to be written many times. Commented Jul 7 at 12:34
The part I would be worried about is the hard disk. I've found that dormant PCs typically have difficulty spinning up the hard drive if left idle for a while. I'm guessing that the lubricant in the bearings dries out.
Conceivably similar issues would arise regarding any CD or DVD player in the PC.
The other thing to worry about is the backup battery for the clock and possibly the BIOS memory that remembers your settings. You may find that the date and time keep resetting to 1970 or something like that, and that it forgets any settings you put into the BIOS. This battery is typically a "button" battery like the CR2032 which should be easy to replace.
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1Interesting. Hard drives (the ones with spinning metal) are still sold that have been produced years ago. I'd always suspect data loss on flash disks. Commented Jul 8 at 8:34
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That's strange, I've booted up hard drives from the 2000's and never ran into that issue, If I find another ancient drive I might pay closer attention and see if it has the issue you've described. I wasn't even aware HDD's used a liquid lubricant, I'd always assumed that any sort of contaminant that could get on the platters would be an issue. Commented Jul 8 at 14:05
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3A long long lonnng time ago I had a hard drive where the motor was accessible. Which was fortunate. On cold mornings it would not start and I had to give the motor a few persuading pushes to convince it to run. Once running it worked well. If anyone thinks that this story sounds improbably I'd agree with them. It does. BUT, it's true! Commented Jul 8 at 15:53
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1I've experienced a number of Quantum hard drives from the 90s fail in an interesting way: The rubber bumper that the head actuator "parks" against tends to dissolve into a sticky goo, and the electromagnet isn't powerful enough to pull the head arm out of the sludge it's parked against. If you had a clean room you could pry it apart and probably revive it for a little while.– smitelliCommented Jul 9 at 3:01
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1I have had a number of backup disks, that by their nature are usually offline, then fail to start up when they were eventually required. Commented Jul 9 at 3:11
Solid state mass storage mediums decay over time, as stated by previous answers. This has a steep temperature dependence, and in a hot environment you can expect data corruption to happen many times faster.
Some older CPUs are (to my understanding) almost eternal devices. However, the soldering that attaches dies to CPU housing, sockets to motherboards, etc, will degrade over time and eventually crack. PS3 consoles had a famous defect in them where the CPU/APU soldering turned brittle in just a few years. I remember fixing a few PS3s by reheating the motherboard with a hot air gun.
Newer CPUs will eventually be killed by background radiation and cosmic rays, but this will take decades.
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"in a hot environment you can expect data corruption to happen many times faster" -- but if an SSD is stored rather than used, it would probably not be "in a hot environment" :-) Commented Jul 9 at 14:54
As others have pointed, electronic components do decay over time. But this time is measured in decades. The computer would be hopelessly obsolete and unfit for any useful work long before that happens.
The largest concern -- that I would not call 'damage to components' since it's not a permanent breakdown -- is that SSDs lose data if left unpowered over a very long time (several years) due to tiny sink currents in their storage cells. (For details, see The Truth About SSD Data Retention which estimates about 10 years of data retention for typical consumer use based on official JEDEC data.) I guess that this is the core reason why they are still not shipped as a PC's primary storage by default.
A small concern is the BIOS battery dying. In my practice (20+ years of adminship as of now), this only happened to some PCs before they were scrapped and also after several years. This only leads to a reset and inability to retain system BIOS settings before power cycles, of which you typically only care about the system clock (for common setups, today's PCs work fine with default BIOS settings).
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What do you mean SSDs are still not shipped as the primary storage by default? For some computers (e.g. Mac laptops) it has not been possible to even get spinning media drives for some number of years. Also, does this mean that USB flash drives, SD cards, etc. which are less likely to be used for some years are also at a danger of losing their contents? (e.g. I have dozens of old 2GB SD cards that I would rather not have to "use" periodically to avoid losing their content, even if I have copies of it elsewhere.)– MichaelCommented Jul 9 at 9:54
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@Michael I wrote with PCs in mind. Macs are vendor-locked-in and have the intended service life of up to 7 years (macworld.com/article/673939/…), so for them, durability doesn't matter. I didn't research thumb drives since the question was about "computers"; to my knowledge, they use older, slower, less rewritable and less dense storage technology but due to the latter, retain data for much longer: it'll probably wear out sooner than it discharges. Commented Jul 9 at 10:02
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2"has little bearing on whether they are used or not." is false for electrolytic capacitors, which both degrade faster if they are used a lot (due to heat) or not at all (see Doxylover's answer). The caps in old power tools frequently explode if you put them back to use after a few years. Commented Jul 9 at 13:08
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@PeteKirkham what about solid capacitors that used on expensive motherboards ? Do they have problems like electrolytic capacitors ? Commented Jul 9 at 14:35
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Mostly RAM, motherboard and other compoenents will not have a shorter lifespan due to not using them. The bios may lose its settings if the battery runs out.
You can lose data from hard drives that are made of floating-gate MOSFETs (flash memory NAND). Like SSDs or M.2.. They are progressively discharged until the information is lost. The hard drive does not break, only the information is lost. Otherwise, the wear is not significant compared to casual use. Regarding this, the use of HDDs is recommended to keep data on long term because they works with a disk of non magnetic material like aluminium. They can store information almost forever. As for how long you have to leave an SSD drive unconnected for it to lose data, it depends on the technology of the drive, but I think this is off topic, if you find it interesting you can check out multi-level cell. It goes since 1-2 years on the QLC (Quad-Level Cell) to 10 years on SLC (Single-Level Cell) depends on the manufacturer.
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1Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please edit to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.– Community BotCommented Jul 7 at 20:43
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1@MikeB HDDs are made of a non magnetic material, e.g aluminium or glass with a magnetic coating Commented Jul 8 at 14:29
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1I think you're confused between hard drives and DRAM. There are no hard drives which use capacitor charge for storage.– SneftelCommented Jul 8 at 15:15
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Flash storage cells use floating-gate MOSFETs (aka static memory), not capacitors (aka dynamic memory). Commented Jul 9 at 14:51