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maximising hard disk life
An interesting snippet spotted in a newsgroup:
In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Omicron Persei 8
<blazingbolt@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Hello I have windows vista ultimate x 64 installed on a new build. The
>hard drive is always running even with indexing off and nothing at all
>running... any idea what is causing this issue and how to correct it?
>
Unless you specifically turn them off, hard drives *will* always be
running. It's *NOT* a mistake. Like fluorescent light-bulbs, the
lifetime of most disk-drives can more be measured in how many times
they're started and stopped than by how many hours they run.
Every time a disk shuts down and powers off, the heads, which should be
flying micro-inches above the surface, "land" and scrape off measurable
amounts of surface from each platter. Oh, they're "lubricated" to
supposedly prevent such damage; but even then the lubricant heats up
under the stress and builds up on the heads; thus making then not fly as
nicely as they're designed to.
The best way to keep your disk-drives running is to keep them running
forever. Considering the price and environmental costs to produce new
disk-drives, it's even less expensive to do so than turning them off.
About the only place turning off disk-drives makes sense is on laptops
when running under battery power.
Still, if you decide you *must* turn off your drives, and are using
Windows:
Right-click on the desktop.
Select "Properties"
Select the "Screen Saver" tab.
Click on the "Power" button down near the bottom.
Then choose the various options to turn various items off when idle;
including disk-drives.
But I really really *really* don't recommend it.
I used to work for Seagate in the Product Assurance Department where we
tested drives to destruction if we could, to find out if they met
specifications before entering production. I was the guy who wrote the
software to test the drives with.
If you want a drive to last a long time: *!!!LEAVE IT ON!!!!*
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maximising hard disk life
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