Sleep Hard Disks by Energy Saver?

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Norm - 08 Jun 2008 04:28 GMT

I've set my computer to "never" sleep so it will run backups during the
night.

I have two external Firewire drives.

I've also been setting the Preference to "put the hard disk(s) to sleep
when possible"

Interested in the pros and cons for this setting of sleeping the hard
drives?

Thanks for any tips.

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David W. Hodgins - 08 Jun 2008 08:40 GMT

> Interested in the pros and cons for this setting of sleeping the hard
> drives?

While sleeping a hard drive that is only accessed once in a while, may
be a good idea, in most cases I don't think it is.

In most cases, the primary cause of problems is temperature changes, not
bearing wear. Keeping the drive running 24/7 will minimize the temperature
changes.

If you are running a laptop, then your primary concern will be battery charge
life, not hd longevity, hence the reason sleep tools are built into linux.

I run boinc/setiathome, so my cpu is kept at a consistent temperature. Same
with the hard drives. As long as the hd has good bearings, the primary thing
that will affect the usefull service life of the drive, is temp. fluctuation.

At least, that's my take on things.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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Doc O'Leary - 08 Jun 2008 16:00 GMT

> > Interested in the pros and cons for this setting of sleeping the hard
> > drives?
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
>
> At least, that's my take on things.

As a counterpoint, thinking in terms of TCO, it may make more sense to
just leave it off most of the time. I have never had a drive fail on me
in less than 5 years of service, at which point it was essentially
obsolete, so I'm not sure what real benefit there is if you could double
that. In that same 5 years of keeping backups, you would have used on
the order of 1/10th the electricity and watched capacity prices drop to
1/5th your initial price. I don't thin it makes sense to baby a 100GB
purchased for $100 in 2003 all the way to 2013 compared to just
replacing it today with a 500GB you leave off most of the time for
another $100.

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Mac Forum / General / Hardware / June 2008

Sleep Hard Disks by Energy Saver?