Re: Hard drive spindown settings
If you are spinning the drive down to extend the useful life of the
drive, you are doing just the opposite.
As long as the drive has adequate cooling (i.e., doesn't burn you
when you touch it), it will stay alive much longer if you leave it
powered up and spinning 24/7. The reason is that the little motor
has to crank out a _lot_ of torque to get the platters going from 0
to 5200+ RPM in only a few seconds. Likewise, once the platters are
spinning, the motor puts out a fraction of that torque to maintain
the RPM. It is from frequent starts/stops that after a couple of
years, you have to tap the drive to get it to start (something to
help the motor overcome the static friction of the bearings).
The bearings are rated at around 350,000 hours MTBF (30 years), as
long as they don't overheat. Put an extra fan in the case by the
drives if it is uncomfortable to hold your finger on it for more
than 10 seconds. The only thing on a computer that doesn't like
being left on forever is the CRT in your monitor, it is closer to a
light-bulb than a transistor. In general electronics like two
states: On or off. Off they aren't much good, so leave the system
on all the time, it is a lot easier on the equipment.
The spindown and power down options are called "Power Saving" modes,
not "life extending" modes. They are merely there to meet US
Government purchase standards in conserving electricity.
later,
troy
Stephen J. Carpenter wrote:
>
> I was looking at the hdparm package yesterday...
> a while back I set my stystem up to issue
> hdparm -S 240 /dev/hda
> at boot...but I am realizing that my drive never spins down.
> in fact it seems liek every few seconds I hear it access...
> I was wondering...
> is this a side effect of "update" running? (I know it flushes the buffers
> every 5 seconds).
> Is there some reason that hdparm is useless (in this regard)?
> it also seems if I hdparm -y /dev/hda
> the drive does spin down...but then a few seconds later spins back up!
> its starting to piss me off a bit.
> I thought of killing update to see if it helps but...I thought better
> of it (just in case)
> id update needed?
>
> Maybe it is just my paranoia....but I have had enough hard drive
> crashes and general failures...id like to minimize the possibility of failure
> and so id like it to spin down when not in use.
> any ideas?
>
> -Steve
>
> --
> /* -- Stephen Carpenter <sjc@delphi.com> --- <sjc@debian.org>------------ */
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