[SOLVED] Is it a good or bad idea to keep a portable hard drive powered and idle??

[brannsiu]

I don't normally turn off my PC and have it on for 24 hours a day 7 days a week....
I have a lot of portable hard drive (they don't have their own power) which are connected to the USB hubs.

Should I "eject" them all during the night or just let them stay connected always and let them idle? Which is better for the hardware of the portable drives?? Or It should be no difference thereotically??

 

[Darkbreeze]

I have many external hard drives and they are never disconnected or "ejected". There is no harm by them being connected. The only wear and tear on hard drives is going to come from actual usage. Sitting idle, really does nothing. Certainly age can be a factor but that is just as likely to be a factor, whether it is powered on or not. It might actually be LESS stressful for the drive to not have to be initiated every time you power on the drive if you unplug it after every use than to simply leave it connected so that it is already ready to go. Honestly, I don't think there is any legitimate appreciable difference one way or the other regarding the drive.

 

[memphisb]

I had an external NAS - Raid 0. I feel that it does shorten the life span of the mech parts.

Except that mine spins even when i m not accessing the data. I assume there is no way of controlling the movement of the drive parts?

I had it running fo3-4 years via usb port of my pc for good 3-4 years before eventually 1 of the raid drive fails.

So I feel its a bad idea to connect it unless you are using the portable drive.

 

[Darkbreeze]

There is a huge difference between an NAS where the drives are powered up and spinning at all times for immediate access, and an external drive enclosure where low power or inactive sleep states are the norm and the enclosure tends to sleep the drive after any period of inactivity and then only spin it back up when access is requested.

Completely different ways of handling storage with completely different methods of disk management when it comes to idle or readiness behavior.