I am running a program that has to run continuously (something like SETI online, only it’s for cancer research). I used to put my computer to “sleep” when I was not using it, which powered down my monitor and stopped my hard drive from spinning. When I would go to use my computer, the monitor would come back on, and the hard drive would rev back up. I no longer put the computer to sleep, as the program needs to access the hard drive. Question: is this killing my hard drive? I mean, are the bearings in it going to wear out running it 24/7?
The spinning up and spinning down will produce FAR more wear than continuous operation. The lack of cold/warm operation cycles also enhances data integrity.
Most hard drive ‘crashes’ come from a bearing failure, so I’d imagine you’re going to wear them out faster. The longer you have it on, the more hours you’re logging up to the MTBF (mean time between failure)…
Although starting/stopping a drive has some stress of it’s own… so I’m not sure how often shutting it on/off becomes more harmful than just letting it run.
Interesting article, but it’s 8 years old.
IMO, while your system may be incurring more wear than it would if it were being shut down or put to “sleep”, statistically it is more likely to become obsolete before parts start to fail.
I once wrote Western Digital about this. They told me that in theory it should be the same either way; but in practice it’s better to turn it off at night & that would make the HD last longer.
This HowStuffWorks article says
It used to be that the bearings were the weakest link for hard drives. Back in the days of the XT, it was not uncommon to hear a drive start screaming, then shortly therafter stop functioning. Drive manufacturers took note of this, and with better manufacturing techniques, better technology, and smaller platters, the bearings now last significantly longer than they did in the old days.
I wouldn’t dare run a drive ten years ago the way you are doing now, but with a modern drive, I don’t think it’s much of a problem. Most likely, the whole computer is going to be “obsolete” and you will have upgraded long before the drive wears out.
I’m not sure that “most” drive crashes these days come from bearing failure. The last few that I’ve had die were one that stopped spinning (bearing or motor failure), one that was killed in a power outage, one that lost its controller board, and one that the head mechanism broke. It’s too small of a sample size to say for sure, but it seems that bearing failure is no longer significantly more likely than other failure modes.