Question Does an internal HDD still go through reads/writes if it's not mounted?

[hiro928]

As the title says, I have a 16 TB internal HDD for storing backups, games, movies and such, but it gets to be a pain in the butt to open my system and connect it every time I go to do backups, so I wonder, could I leave it connected inside my system, but leave it unmounted within Windows Disk Management, and it would be fine? Would it still go through reads/writes or have wear & tear even if it's not mounted?

 

[TerryLaze]

It would not do any read writes but the electronics would get power meaning that they would get used up. Fuses capacitors and so on have a certain amount of power cycles as well as time before failure. But on the other hand they also have a certain shelf life so no matter what you do it is going to fail at some point.