Turn off the Hard Disk after period of inactivity?, Good or Bad?

[Thenightmare12]

Hey Everyone.

should a Hard Disk set to turn off after a period of inactivity? like 20Mins ?
or not?

I use my PC 24/7 and i dont turn it off for Months, and I Want the best option for my Hard Drives, cause i dont want to hurt them, they really important to me.

everytime i wanna go to one of my Drives it takes 5 secs to spin up and Hard drive sounds bad when it spins up.

now, should Leave it on 20Mins or should i set it to Never... ???
which one of those two option is better for HDDs ?

Thank you all in advance.

 

[06yfz450ridr]

honestly i remember seeings something about this like on NAS' , you will save more power, less noise etc with it set to spin down when not in use saving the actual drive motor. the only time year really need to to never power down is if you are constantly accessing files very 20 minutes or so causing to to constantly spin up and down. I always set min to spin down after 20 minutes but in reality that drive motor can last a long time while running all the time but I wouldnt chance it.

 

[Sakkura]

There is some small amount of mechanical wear when the HDD is just spinning, so having it spin down after some period of inactivity is a good idea. But it shouldn't be too often, because spinning down and up again introduces a more substantial amount of mechanical wear. So setting it to something like 30 minutes or an hour would make sense. It won't spin for no reason overnight eg., but it also won't be spinning up and down all the time either.

 

[Onus]

IMHO that's a really tough call. Spinning up a drive is one of the most stressful things you can do to it, but spindle motor bearings are a wear-point. This sounds like a calculus min-max problem with a good bit of hair on it.
Taking your statement about the drives "they really important to me," and attributing it to the data on those drives rather than the drives themselves, you have a couple of options. One, that I use myself, is to use RAID1 pairs for data. If a drive fails, you still have everything on the other. Two, which you should do even if you also use a RAID1 pair, is to get a decent-sized additional drive (typically external) for backup purposes.
How old are your drives?
Before I started using RAID1 pairs, I tended to replace my drives every 3-4 years, whether they really needed it or not. Often I needed a bigger drive anyway, but I'm sure I wasted some money doing this.
I also now use mostly WD Black drives, for their five-year warranties. None have failed in service, although I think the oldest one is only about four years old.

Edit: Otherwise, I agree that the idle period should probably be longer than twenty minutes; an hour or two is probably better.

 

[Thenightmare12]

IMHO that's a really tough call. Spinning up a drive is one of the most stressful things you can do to it, but spindle motor bearings are a wear-point. This sounds like a calculus min-max problem with a good bit of hair on it.
Taking your statement about the drives "they really important to me," and attributing it to the data on those drives rather than the drives themselves, you have a couple of options. One, that I use myself, is to use RAID1 pairs for data. If a drive fails, you still have everything on the other. Two, which you should do even if you also use a RAID1 pair, is to get a decent-sized additional drive (typically external) for backup purposes.
How old are your drives?
Before I started using RAID1 pairs, I tended to replace my drives every 3-4 years, whether they really needed it or not. Often I needed a bigger drive anyway, but I'm sure I wasted some money doing this.
I also now use mostly WD Black drives, for their five-year warranties. None have failed in service, although I think the oldest one is only about four years old.

Edit: Otherwise, I agree that the idle period should probably be longer than twenty minutes; an hour or two is probably better.

1. Thanks.
2. My Hard Drives are:

465GB Seagate ST500DM002-1BD142 (SATA) - 3 years or 4
698GB Seagate ST3750640NS (SATA) - 3 years
465GB SAMSUNG HM500JI (SATA) - 4 years
931GB StoreJet Transcend USB Device (USB) - 2 years

and im gonna set it to 1hour, and i do have back up on my External Drive (its not enough though).
but should i be worry about my HDDs ?

 

[Onus]

If you've got a good backup process in place, then you probably don't need to worry about your HDDs. If one fails, you haven't lost any data; get a new drive and restore the last dataset(s) onto it.

 

[Thenightmare12]

If you've got a good backup process in place, then you probably don't need to worry about your HDDs. If one fails, you haven't lost any data; get a new drive and restore the last dataset(s) onto it.

I will get a new External Hard drive (2tb or 4tb) to back up everything on it.
and i set the turn off HDDs on 1 hour, like u said.

thanks for your help and time (all of you guys).

 

[SBMfromLA]

I'll give you a quick answer... having the hard drive spin down after X amount of time will help to extend the life.. However, you need to understand that there is a slight traide-off. It will take your computer an extra second or two to spin it back up. I have three drives in my computer.. and I keep my Documents, Downloads, music and videos on the third drive. When I access data on one of those drives... and if I hadn't used it in a while.. I can see the delay when I click to open a folder.. but you can change the time delay.. make it 1 hours.. even 4 hours...