i had a old harddrive in the computer tower in the garage for months since i was going to throw everything away>winter season too so the garage was freezing and dusty dirty. The hard drive had dusk dirt on it. I took the hard drive out at that time and left it in the basement in a plastic lunch zipper bag and took a plastic grocery bag and put it over it. Months later i buy a external case for peanuts just to see if the hard drive will work and to collect my old data for fun from it and it works just as how it worked before the last time i used the old computer with that hard drive in there. Isn't this funny that people talk about so much precautions, use a static wrap, dont use a magnetic screwdriver. Wrap your hard drive in special plastic. I completely treated the hd drive like crap and it has no effects, interesting or are you guys not surprised?

im not saying that you should treat your hdd without care, im just saying that hdd aren't so easy to brake

I had an old PIII system given to me that was absolutly loaded with malware but the person did not want it anymore as they could not afford an Internet connection.

It had 2 80GB hard drives running Win96SE that I used for a while after removing the malware until it died back in March when I decided to venture into the world of Vista as I like to learn and not stagnate.

Now one hard drive is in my XP Pro system for Acronis backup and one in in a USB external case that I use for backup and file transfer.

Soon the little USB Flash Drives will have that much capacity.

I love my WinPatrol wristband though.
http://winpatrol.stores.yahoo.net/winpatro...-wristband.html

There are some flash drives as high as 1 tb

@YoKenny1

That wristband is really neat