hmm, on Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 10:16:28AM +1300, Paul M said that > I wouldn't think that spinning up frequently would shorten > it's life any more than if it stayed spinning. It may be very > irritating from a performance point of view though.
i am no hard disk expert, but i was taught at school that the starting part of a usage curve has a much bigger wear on the parts than steady operation. this is at least true for a great number of electric parts. i'd be more than happy to change the sleep timer to a value with some common sense, like 4-5 minutes. it is most annoying when you view some files but linger in one of them more than 10s and in pretty much all the other use cases one can imagine. i find my 3.5" external drive's 10 minutes an excellent choice (this one's a 2.5"). > Try a different usb enclosure. this is not an option this time. -f -- what, me ambivalent? well, yes and no.
