"Random" Spin-ups on External USB and other drives

I have a SATA DVD-RW, an ATAPI Zip drive, and a Seagate FreeAgent USB
drive connected to my Windows XP Pro system, and I have a question that
I have not found a satisfactory answer to. When these devices are in an
inactive or power-saving mode, why do they seem to "randomly" spin up
when I'm doing something totally unrelated? For example, if I start a
DVD movie, the Zip drive might spin up; or I might open a photo on my
primary IDE hard disk and the FreeAgent will spin up. Why do these "non
sequitur" spin ups happen???

I ask because I am concerned about needless wear and tear and possible
future premature failures from all these frequent powerings up and down,
particularly with the FreeAgent, because it's non-removable media and I
have all my backups on there. Is it better if I, for example, unplug
the FreeAgent when not in use, or at the other extreme, set it to be
"always on"?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Dave

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
I have a SATA DVD-RW, an ATAPI Zip drive, and a Seagate FreeAgent USB
drive connected to my Windows XP Pro system, and I have a question that
I have not found a satisfactory answer to. When these devices are in an
inactive or power-saving mode, why do they seem to "randomly" spin up
when I'm doing something totally unrelated? For example, if I start a
DVD movie, the Zip drive might spin up; or I might open a photo on my
primary IDE hard disk and the FreeAgent will spin up. Why do these "non
sequitur" spin ups happen???

I assume this is on some MS toy OS. These tend to enumerate devices,
look at directories and the like regularly. This may be worse if the
device is marked as 'removable'. However marking it as non-removable
increases the chance of data-loss on accidential removal somewhat.

I ask because I am concerned about needless wear and tear and possible
future premature failures from all these frequent powerings up and down,
particularly with the FreeAgent, because it's non-removable media and I
have all my backups on there. Is it better if I, for example, unplug
the FreeAgent when not in use, or at the other extreme, set it to be
"always on"?

Any advice would be appreciated.

The usual spin-up number a non-notebook HDD is designed to
withstand during its lifetime is about 50'000. If you assume
5 years lifetime and use every day, that gives you 28 start-stop
cycles per day. I agree that this may be a concern. I would
advise unplug, since it also makes doing backups a more explicit
act. Incidentially, you should at least use two backup media.
(Sysadmins wisdom is three, but one in there is reserverd for
human error.)

Arno