> > > > it saves some electricity, which is good. the disk spends most of its > > time spun-down and with most of its electronics powered down. My > > primary rationale for doing this is I think "off" must be less stressful > > than "on". What I'm worried about is: does the stress of powering the > > disk up and down and spinning the disk up and down even once a day cause > > more stress than would just letting it spin all the time? Am I causing > > more wear and tear than I'm saving? Or, am I worrying over nothing? > > > > Hey Ben, > > I cannot speak from worldly knowledge of this but I have recently > encountered serious issues with Maxtor ATA-133 IDE drives, model 7Y250P > (beware!). Some drives have started failing after 30+ power cycles, and > others have died simply by running the SMART self-diagnostic. I have > gone through a half-dozen of them since February, and of course have > started rotating them out of use completely. Then again, I have several > WD drives at home that go through power cycles almost daily without > problem. They are going on 4 years now. They just don't make 'em like > they used to! I know this doesn't really help to answer your question, > unless you happen to be running the above mentioned Maxtor drives. > > My $0.03 -- share the difference with Sebastian :) > > - Colin > Seems you hay have just gotten a bad batch of Maxtor drives. I started using Maxtor exclusively several years ago and have had nothing but top notch performance from them.
In the end I think your idea of powering down the hard drive is a good idea. I have read that the rated drive life is based on light drive use (being on only a few hours at a time in a desktop enviroment). The useful life a drive falls considerably in a dedicated server enviroment with the disk spinning 24/7. Damon _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
