powering off & hard drives

[rh71]

My 3 or 4 HDDs (few hundred GBs each) in my main rig are getting up there in age. I've recently started to try saving money all over the house and really the only thing left is turning off my PC at night (sleep mode). But most of the time this is not working as planned since it blue screens (ATI drivers) on resume/startup sometimes and I have to restart it anyway. Got me thinking about the drives. According to recent articles, they say "PCs aren't that fragile anymore" that they'll break due to the hot/cold so it's fine to turn them off/on. But what about the mechanical parts of a HDD? They are more important to me than any energy savings. Is all this off/on every day really bad for them? My power scheme is set to have the HDDs turn off after 160min but it seems they're always available right away... not sure if this is the same as the main power off/on.

 

[corkyg]

I just leave my internals on 24/7, and just turn the LCD monitor off. Been doing this for over 10 years, and haven't lost a drive yet. Have 3 internals - one OS and programs and 1 RAID1 data array. A backup data array is on a eSATA external, only on when needed. My power settings are NEVER off. I just don't trust automagic anything.

 

[greenhawk]

power saving on HDD tick my off, but that is more to do with them going to sleep when in the middle of being used (ie: game that only accesses on level change ect).

Personally, if you are after power savings, turn the computer off. Sleep can work but for what it does and how often I use the computer, it is not a issue I care for.

If you want it to do tasks at random times, then best look at building or using a older computer and run it bare boned. Even a atom system for doing torrenting or hosting a web site is better than running a full gaming system with lots of extra bits.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Drives park themselves all the time when idle. Powering off won't hurt them and will save a little energy.

 

[Slugbait]

Personally, if you are after power savings, turn the computer off.

I started doing this on my primary machines back when Blaster was released, power savings was just a bonus.

On the other hand, all three of my HTPCs go to sleep, for obvious reasons. Various issues around ATi and Sleep Mode have been around for a long time, as well as other issues, so I've been exclusively nVidia since retiring my Matrox Marvel...seldom have had issues with sleep.

 

[mfenn]

Drives park themselves all the time when idle. Powering off won't hurt them and will save a little energy.

That's just the heads. Putting the drive to sleep actually spins down the main drive motors.

 

[rh71]

I have had bad clusters a few times... does powering off/on cause or accelerate that at all? What are the main reasons drives die?

 

[mfenn]

Bad sectors are usually due to imperfections in the platters that emerge over time. Powering a drive on an off won't cause that failure mode. What it will do is put more mechanical stress on the drive motor, potentially causing it to fail earlier.

However, the main reason not to power drives up and down is to minminimize the number of thermal cycles that you're placing on the drive. Hard drives are manufactured to fantastically fine tolerances and repeated expansion and contraction due to changes in temperature will cause things to fall out of acceptable tolerance and fail. That's exactly what Google found with their study. It doesn't matter too much what temperature the drive is at, but instead that it stays at a constant temperature for a long period of time.

 

[VirtualLarry]

However, the main reason not to power drives up and down is to minminimize the number of thermal cycles that you're placing on the drive. Hard drives are manufactured to fantastically fine tolerances and repeated expansion and contraction due to changes in temperature will cause things to fall out of acceptable tolerance and fail. That's exactly what Google found with their study. It doesn't matter too much what temperature the drive is at, but instead that it stays at a constant temperature for a long period of time.

This, totally. Before I switched to SSD, I kept my drives running 24/7. Still good to this day (2007 to present), no bad sectors or problems.