Storage Solutions External HDD - always on?

[singenaadam]

A generic query.

Theoretically the life of a hard disk would come down on constant use, even if only wear & tear of moving parts is considered. In this scenario, is it advisable to keep the external HDD always on? or switch them on/off as needed.

Switching on/off while no big task, is still one!

In a similar vein, would there be a difference (in case it is always on, instead of need-based on/off) on an external HDD life, in case, it is one designed to be so, like a Seagate FreeAgent, compared with a home made oe like slipping an internal HDD in a case?

Crashing of external HDD becomes a crisis as esp., in my case, they hold all critical back-ups & downloads.

Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?

 

[Gannu]

^As for the HDD being kept on all the time, ideally it isn't healthy for the hard drive since the platters keep spinning even when the drive's not being accessed which generates heat unnecessarily.

Switch it off when it is not being accessed. It should improve the life of the drive although these drives are meant to last typically longer than the warranty period. By then probably you would have disposed off the drive.

There would be a difference in the performance of drives plonked in an unknown casing since such cheap casings do not come with a good SATA controller and the related circuitry onboard. Whereas reputed manufacturers such as Seagate, WD, Transcend, Buffalo etc to name a few, use good controllers (such as Jmicron for instance) onboard the external casing. In most cases, the controllers can go bad sparing the HDD. I'm not sure how it affects if the drive's switched on all the time though.

 

[Udit]

^As for the HDD being kept on all the time, ideally it isn't healthy for the hard drive since the platters keep spinning even when the drive's not being accessed which generates heat unnecessarily.

all popular operating system support turning off the hdd after it's idle for the user set time :S

 

[Gannu]

^But does that stop the platters from spinning? I think one can easily feel the difference by feeling the vibration of the drive which's fairly due to the spinning of the platters.

 

[singenaadam]

I too think so. Esp., each time you open the Explorer, the drive (will have to &) does spring in to action, even if it is not accessed. One can feel the vibrations. I use a mouse pad to dampen them, but still, if you place your hand on the casing, one can feel them.

 

[shantanugoel]

There are few more things to note here:

1. All casings/controllers might not support commands to spin down the HDDs. So even though OS supports it, HDD still might not spin down

2. Some HDDs support it built-in (through the onboard chip). You can generally program the finer details of this by connecting it internally to a PC and then using "hdparm" to set these parameters. But many times, your custom settings might not stick across a HDD reboot.

3. Spinning down is not always good. e.g. in cases when some tool/service/program running on your PC keeps waking up the disc often. It would be better to let it spin all the time in such a case..

4. There are tools available with which you can force the HDD to spin down and spin up (e.g. sg_start/stop utilities for linux). You can roll your own custom scripts with these to control the behaviour but YMMV in reliability..