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Ask a Geek! Hard Drive Spin Down Do or Don't?
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Author | Topic: Hard Drive Spin Down Do or Don't? |
Overload Maximum Newbie Posts: 16 |
posted July 22, 2002 18:25
I was wondering if it is a good idea to let my hard drive spin down every 30 minutes of inactivity? Is there a better interval, or is it not needed at all? This information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Overload ------------------ Genius, that power that dazzles mortal eyes, is oft but perseverance in disguise. IP: Logged |
neotatsu Highlie Posts: 609 |
posted July 22, 2002 19:52
I usually do on my older PC because it speeds up loading times when I'm just chating and surfing the net...other than that I don't know the advantage/disadvantage of doing so... P.S. I often spend 6-7 hours chating in one sitting at that computer (between mindight and 6/7 oclock in the morning(I dun sleep, much..)) ------------------ IP: Logged |
neotatsu Highlie Posts: 609 |
posted July 23, 2002 00:46
Does no one have a proper answer? Mayhaps no one saw it in 'todays active topics'?? I'm kinda curious as to whether or not it's good or bad... ------------------ IP: Logged |
ilovemydualg4 Highlie Posts: 525 |
posted July 23, 2002 03:15
ta-da! the magic eight ball says... if it is a laptop running on battery, it is obviously better to spin down to save power. on a desktop, when the hard disk isn't being used much, it may have an advantage, as long as you don't end up bringing it right back up after you spin it down continually (might run down the hard disk depending on what kind it is). Personally, I make sure that it never does on my g4.i don't care about power draw, and the disk is allmost constantly accessed for one reason or another. ------------------ IP: Logged |
tafkact Highlie Posts: 669 |
posted July 23, 2002 19:09
DO NOT always on, or shut off the PC
(www.harddrivehell.com) i think i've come into every problem that has to do with harddrives ove my last 19 years in the world of PCs
quote: and that's the ONLY exception to the rule, but if you have the option to plug in the wall wart, do it - and if yer gonna be away from the laptop THAT long, not only is there a good chance it will grow legs and run away, but you may as well power off to save the battery IP: Logged |
Bregalad Alpha Geek Posts: 346 |
posted July 24, 2002 00:17
quote: Maybe I'm asking for trouble but my iBook is set to spin down after 3 minutes of "inactivity" when running on its battery. That setting works fine for me because I'm plugged into the wall for serious work and only float around on battery power when I'm chatting online or taking notes at a meeting. It sounds like the laptops you've used don't spin down their drives unless there is zero user activity. My iBook is perfectly happy to shut down the drive and let me type away in an IRC client for a full hour without once trying to spin the drive back up. That's what I call intelligent power management software. IP: Logged |
neotatsu Highlie Posts: 609 |
posted July 24, 2002 01:39
thats what my PC does too... ------------------ IP: Logged |
ilovemydualg4 Highlie Posts: 525 |
posted July 24, 2002 03:43
it caches what you type in the ram or somewhere(duh), it would only spin up when you save the file.If you computer is only for wordprocessing (nnot saying your is, but if it was), then this may be a good idea depending on how frequently you saved. ------------------ IP: Logged |
MacManKrisK Super Geek Posts: 236 |
posted July 24, 2002 10:22
There's two theories on the issue, but everyone agrees on one thing, if you're running on batteries, power it down as much as possible. Now, the two theories... The first theory stems from the belief that if a drive is going to fail, it will most likely fail upon startup. This is true and lends people that subscribe to this theroy to want to never spin down their drives (because if they're going to fail, it's gonna' be on powerup). The second theory stems from the belief that if your drive isn't constantly on, it's expierencing less wear and tear on the motor. These people say that even though the drive is (most likely) going to fail on startup, that if you don't run it all the time there will be less wear and tear and thus less chance that the drive will fail at all. Choose which theory best suits you. Also, keep in mind that having the drive spin down and then spin back up and then spin back down and then spin back up over and over again is probably worse for it then just having it spin constantly (and really annoying too). As for me, I have the drives on my fileserver at home actually set to spin down after only one minute. I'd like to leave them up all the time (since it's a fileserver) but the noise (and heat) from the 7200RPM drive is just too much and, suprizingly enough, a 1 minute spindown works fairly well for my situation. ------------------ IP: Logged |
frankflynn Newbie Larva Posts: 2 |
posted July 31, 2002 16:22
I have an external HD case with 4 SCSI disks in it, I'm using an Adaptec 39160 SCSI card - all high performance stuff, at least it cost enough. The problem is if the disks spin down (as they do when I'm not using them) it can take fooorrreevveerr (OK 30 seconds or so) to come up to speed. This will freeze whatever program wanted to access them (you can switch to other programs who will work fine - thank you OS X). Usually it's the finder but it can be Entourage which is strange since it is not on the external disks. You can sit there and watch the little red lights come on as it spins up. Other programs like Retrospect will always have this problem but you'd expect Retrospect to check for disks when it starts. So needless to say I do not have them spin down. IP: Logged |
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