Question What's the best setup for drive health in a media server?

[Cole.perera]

I'm planning on making a media box for my movies so it'll be accessed pretty rarely but I want it on all the time so I can access it from anywhere. The OS will be on a SSD and the movies on a ageing hard drive.

How do I make that drive last as long as possible? I know windows has a feature to turn disks off after a length of time if they're inactive. Is that what I want or will spinning up and down cause more ware? The data isn't really important so redundancy or backups aren't a concern.

 

[kanewolf]

Using the term "ageing hard drive" in the description of a new build which is supposed to be a storage centered device doesn't make much sense. Bulk disk storage is so cheap, I can't understand why you would compromise the basic function of your goal.

 

[Cole.perera]

Using the term "ageing hard drive" in the description of a new build which is supposed to be a storage centered device doesn't make much sense. Bulk disk storage is so cheap, I can't understand why you would compromise the basic function of your goal.

Because I have a retired HDD from my main rig and feel bad about it sitting on a shelf collecting dust. I felt it would be a fairly good way to keep that data off my main PC. Also the box itself is going to serve as a HTTPc for my TV so it's not necessarily the main goal but more of a fun project.

 

[doolittle]

Not much you can do except monitor the SMART stats every so often - good list of utils here.

Please don't make the mistake of putting sleep modes as a priority, WD green and reds die very often due to the aggressive power management setting (head parking threshold gets exceeded very early in the drive's lifespan), I always set it to 5mins + for any spin-down.

 

[Cole.perera]

Not much you can do except monitor the SMART stats every so often - good list of utils here.

Please don't make the mistake of putting sleep modes as a priority, WD green and reds die very often due to the aggressive power management setting (head parking threshold gets exceeded very early in the drive's lifespan), I always set it to 5mins + for any spin-down.

Thank you I'll keep that in mind!