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Hard Drives Spin Down/Spin Up
I'm a recent convert to the power savings options of my Studio XPS 8100
desktop. Previously, everything was running all the time with no attempt to save power. Now that I'm employing power savings, I'm hearing something that I didn't notice befo the sound of my hard drives (2)spinning down and spinning up while I'm sitting at the computer, probably in accordance with my power settings. Is it okay for the hard drives to spin down and up frequently, or was I better off with leaving them running all the time? (P.S. I used to power down my computer every night; now it just goes to (S3) sleep.) Daddy |
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Hard Drives Spin Down/Spin Up
In ,
Daddy typed on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:55:18 -0500: I'm a recent convert to the power savings options of my Studio XPS 8100 desktop. Previously, everything was running all the time with no attempt to save power. Now that I'm employing power savings, I'm hearing something that I didn't notice befo the sound of my hard drives (2)spinning down and spinning up while I'm sitting at the computer, probably in accordance with my power settings. Is it okay for the hard drives to spin down and up frequently, or was I better off with leaving them running all the time? (P.S. I used to power down my computer every night; now it just goes to (S3) sleep.) Daddy To answer that question, we need to know that make and model of the hard drive. Then look up the specs (if published). For example, the MTBF of the last hard drive I looked up had a MTBF for spin-ups was 50,000 times. Say it does this about 5 times per hour and the computer runs for about 12 hours a day. That would be like 833 days or about 2 1/4 years. Spinning up once a day, it would take about 137 years to hit 50,000 spin-ups. MTBF isn't an exact science of course. Some can go longer and some less. But there is a little doubt that a lot of spin-ups per day will shortened the life of a hard drive significantly. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) Centrino Core Duo 1.83G - 2GB - Windows XP SP3 |
#3
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Hard Drives Spin Down/Spin Up
Hi!
Is it okay for the hard drives to spin down and up frequently, or was I better off with leaving them running all the time? (P.S. I used to power down my computer every night; now it just goes to (S3) sleep.) Schools of thought differ on this. My own take on it? Outside of laptops, just let the drives run steadily. If Windows is going to spin them up and down often, you might as well save the wear and tear. And believe me, Windows and all of the drivers, system services, programs and whatnot that you are running will request a spinup quite often. Other operating systems do behave a little differently in this regard. Spinup does stress the drive's electronics a bit more than just sitting there running (in particular, the servo driver for the spindle motor, which will have to supply more current to get the motor moving) and waiting for the next request. If a device is going to fail, it's more likely to fail when under more stress than normal. Putting your computer to sleep is fine, at the S3 level it won't be drawing much more power than it would be if it was simply "off". William |
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Hard Drives Spin Down/Spin Up
On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:23:30 -0600, "BillW50" wrote:
(snip) But there is a little doubt that a lot of spin-ups per day will shortened the life of a hard drive significantly. That's the essence of the answer. |
#5
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Hard Drives Spin Down/Spin Up
who where wrote:
On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:23:30 -0600, "BillW50" wrote: (snip) But there is a little doubt that a lot of spin-ups per day will shortened the life of a hard drive significantly. That's the essence of the answer. Thanks to both of you. Think I'll adjust my power saving options. Daddy |
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