Preventing hard drive failure

Bullitt · 10-02-2007, 09:08 PM

Soooo to those of the technical persuasion, what is the best way to prolong the life of my backup external hard drives? Should I only leave them on when I am actively using them transferring data, leave them on all the time, something inbetween? Yes I backup everything to DVD's as well, so I'm not solely relying on these for my data's safety, but I'm not exactly rich enough to afford new 500gb hard drives on a whim.

Undertoad · 10-02-2007, 10:24 PM

This year you aren't rich enough, next year they'll be under $100.

I've never seen data on whether drives prefer to run all the time or be power-cycled on for occasional use. The manufacturers claim to rate them with a Mean Time Between Failure number, and it's in hours; so you'd figure, if you're going to use them for an hour, and then not use them for 23, best to shut off. But the manufacturers do capture the number of times a drive is powered on in the S.M.A.R.T. data kept on all modern drives, so they consider that meaningful.

All that said - in an external enclosure heat is more likely to be a problem. So my vote is, power it off.

10-02-2007, 09:08 PM	#1
Bullitt This is a fully functional babe lair Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Akron, OH Posts: 2,324	Preventing hard drive failure Soooo to those of the technical persuasion, what is the best way to prolong the life of my backup external hard drives? Should I only leave them on when I am actively using them transferring data, leave them on all the time, something inbetween? Yes I backup everything to DVD's as well, so I'm not solely relying on these for my data's safety, but I'm not exactly rich enough to afford new 500gb hard drives on a whim. __________________ Kiss my white Irish ass.

10-02-2007, 10:24 PM	#2
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	This year you aren't rich enough, next year they'll be under $100. I've never seen data on whether drives prefer to run all the time or be power-cycled on for occasional use. The manufacturers claim to rate them with a Mean Time Between Failure number, and it's in hours; so you'd figure, if you're going to use them for an hour, and then not use them for 23, best to shut off. But the manufacturers do capture the number of times a drive is powered on in the S.M.A.R.T. data kept on all modern drives, so they consider that meaningful. All that said - in an external enclosure heat is more likely to be a problem. So my vote is, power it off.

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)