Windows Power Options: Turn off hard-disk after...

[fstime]

What is the general consensus on this option? I know for SSD is is probably irrelavent so I am refering to hard disks.

I have my desktop set to never since I assumed a hard drive is most likely to fail while turning on/off, as that is where most of the wear and tear comes from, not while it is actually running.

SDD as my primary, 2 disks as secondary storage.

 

[Schmide]

Actually the most common cause of HD failure is a head crash. I doubt letting it spin down and cool off will shorten its life cycle.

I let mine spin down. It's kind of annoying when you need something from it and it takes a few seconds, but ehh.

 

[fstime]

Spin down =/= cut off power though unless that is what you are referring to.

 

[Cerb]

I use S3 anyways, so I set it to never, to not have to wait on it, and don't worry about it. It probably reduces its life to spin it down, much like shutting it off, but failure of HDDs is too random for me to care in either case.

 

[corkyg]

I never shut down or spin down my HDD except for once a week. Been doing that for years and it keeps on chugging.

 

[IntelUser2000]

On my setup on the sig, when that option was on the Segate drive would spin down. I sometimes notice lag when the drive needs to back up, even though I have the application installed on the SSD. So I keep it off, as its very annoying. Plus I don't notice the noise until the drive is off so spinning up and down adds to the annoyance.

 

[KingFatty]

Are there any test results/analysis to show whether spin down/up and/or constant operation affects hard drives?

I know google did a study to see what factors affected hard drive failure, but I don't remember if there was any connection with spin up. I think temperature had an effect though, so I could see the value of spinning down a drive to keep it cool. Whether the coolness is worth additional spin up/spin down, that's the question in my mind.

But aren't drives rated in MTBF hours of operation, and don't even rate based on spin up/down cycles? I figure, spinning down a drive would benefit you two-fold in that case, by saving you heat production, and by saving you from increasing the amount of operational time the drive experiences.

But getting more theoretical, why or how would spin up/down cause wear to a drive that is different from typical wear caused by spinning at full speed?
Are we just suffering from assuming that spin up for a drive is like spin up for a gasoline internal combustion engine that uses oil for lubrication? I could see how a gasoline/oil-based engine would have additional wear for spinning up/down due to oil pressure changes, but that's just not an issue for hard drives. The drives themselves have a procedure for spin up/down to avoid jerkiness, so maybe there is no additional burden to spinning up/down and really it's just a matter of whether the drive is operating/spinning at all, since the hard drives are so good at spin up/down? Can anyone bring some facts to my rambling speculations?

 

[Bill Brasky]

In a laptop with plenty of ram, I would spin down the disk after a few minutes. However I move my laptop a lot and worried about head crashes before I switched to a ssd.