Best to have Hard Drive always on?

[MajSharpy]

Hi,

I bought a new Seagate 2TB ST2000DM001 Barracuda a few weeks back and I've set to turn off at 20 mins as I have nothing on it but a few empty folders at the moment, and I was wondering if it will last longer longer if it's always on?

I had Seagate ST2000DMx1 or something like that, it was a hard drive surveillance which I used for recording game footage also playing games off which is probably what it's not used for, saying that it did last 2 years and half months before it died.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there MajSharpy,

I don't really think that this should have any major impact on the drive's lifespan.
Generally speaking, a drive that is reading/writing all the time, should have a shorter lifespan than a drive that is not under heavy loads. Yet, as far as I understand, you are not accessing the drive and it just stays idle.
I think that 20 mins should be fine. Just test it from time to time with a brand specific testing tool and have a good back up of your important data.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[CountMike]

If it's in windows it will wake up as soon as you access any drive, even if it's only secondary so it will wake up even after those 20 minutes. Every time it has to start up, start motor and go thru it's POST.

 

[MajSharpy]

If it's in windows it will wake up as soon as you access any drive, even if it's only secondary so it will wake up even after those 20 minutes. Every time it has to start up, start motor and go thru it's POST.

So should have my second drive set to always on? because if it's just going to keep waking up when I use things on my main drive and it's said that drives use alot of power having to start up everytime.

 

[CountMike]

That's true, every electromagnetic device does that. I always set it to work all the time and never lost a HDD because of it and my computer runs 24/7.