On Sat, 07 May 2005 12:38:44 +0100 Ognjen Bezanov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Some people say that Setting the Hard disks to power down will extend > their life, while others say that keeping the drives running constantly > will extend their life (on the pretext that spin-up/downs wear the HD > more then when they are constantly running). > Wear on a hard drive is caused by bearing wear. A drive running at 4200 or 5400 rpm will last much longer than a drive running at 7200 rpm or faster. The same thing with any mechanical item, like a car's engine - wear down the bearings and it dies. The faster the engine turns, the sooner it dies. Same with hard drives. > So I thought id ask here to see what your opinions/experiences are > regarding this. My worry is that I am about to add a 200GB drive, this > will hold a lot of files (and will be on for ages) but will not have any > redundency so i'm worried about it failing. > If it's an IDE drive running at 7200 rpm or faster, with continous running, it should be replaced every 1.5 yrs. If it's a SCSI drive running at 10,000 RPM or faster continously, then replacement should occur in 2 yrs. Yes, I know about warranty and all. If you have a good backup system and don't mind having a drive offline for hours on end until the restore is done, then wait for it to die. If you have a RAID 5 or better, just wait until the a drive dies. Bob -- - -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
