Is leaving your computer on all the time (24/7) better for hard drive?

westom · Oct 23, 2012

Damage is due to starting and stopping. Most aggressive and harmful starting and stopping is when heads move. Most drive platter damage is due to contamination even from wear of moving heads and spinning disk. To increase drive life expectancy, eliminate operation when hardware need not be operational. Power off when done to increase hardware life expectancy.

Also destructive is transistor switching. Most damage occurs during an event so violent that its junction even outputs a tiny IR pulse during each switch. Violent transistor switching occurs continuously at thousands and millions times a second. To reduce the number of violent cycles, power a drive down when not in use. So that both transistor and mechanical life expectancy increases.

westom · Oct 23, 2012

intel 4004 said:
What about forcing it to be off by holding the power button? Will it shortens my hard drive life?

All drives first learn about power off when voltage starts dropping. To a disk drive, power off is same whether from shutdown, by yanking the power cord, or by a nation wide blackout. Even when disk drives moved heads with motor oil, disk drives first learned about and did the necessary shutdown procedures when incoming voltages began dropping.

Drive hardware does not care how power is lost. A drive's computer does same power down procedures starting when voltage drops. Drives are never told, in advance, of a power off. No reason to.

bobafetthotmail · Oct 24, 2012

DeaconFrost said:
HDDs are mechanical parts, and the more wear and tear you put on them, the more you increase their chances of failure.

All machinery is rated for a certain amount of actions, power on/off, hours of working, whatever. That's the time it is designed to work flawlessly regardless of how "tiring" the action itself may be.
For most devices though such numbers are so huge that the device itself becomes outdated well before the parts themselves fail. So while common sense is correct (doing it will actually shorten the life of the product), the actual life of the product was so damn long to start with that really, it makes little difference in the end.

The same general common sense applies with SSDs, people get worried about cells wearing out by read-write cycles, and it's true in theory, but when you start looking at numbers you discover that you need to keep writing 5+ GB of material per day, for years if not decades to really wear it out. So lol, no worries.

He started with "For example, the worst drive I ever saw was rated for 40,000 power cycles.", don't know where he took that number, but is in the general neighborhood of most "rated for" specs I've seen thrown around for hardware.

Britton30 · Oct 24, 2012

I've never seen a rating for power cycles for a drive myself. There are specs for MTBF, Mean Time Before Failure, which is generally 1 million hours. Of course there are those that will fail in 10 minutes and then the ones which become outdated as you say well before it dies.

westom · Oct 24, 2012

Britton30 said:
I've never seen a rating for power cycles for a drive myself.

Early transistors were rated by a number of switching cycles. As that number became large, then datasheets also dropped that specification. A number exists. But nobody cares.

100,000 power cycles was a typical drive life expectancy over 20 years ago. Since then, even that number became so large as to be irrelevant. And still some just know otherwise by ignoring numbers.

All devices are damaged by too many power cycles. The informed consumer never makes a hearsay conclusion from that subjective statement. The informed learn from numbers. Perspective (quantitative facts) is the difference between a subjectively educated victim and the informed consumer. Unfortunately too many recite popular hearsay (subjective reasoning) rather than first learn facts (quantitative reasoning).

Two common 'hearsay generated' conclusions are hardware damage from heat and power cycling. Ten degree temperature differences are also too tiny to affect electronic part life expectancy.

linnemeyerhere · Oct 24, 2012

With the adoption of SSD main drives I say if you're going to be away for more than two hours then shut down and save energy, heat, wear and tear........30 to 45 seconds and you're back in business so why not?

Britton30 · Oct 24, 2012

westom said:
Britton30 said:

I've never seen a rating for power cycles for a drive myself.

Click to expand...

Early transistors were rated by a number of switching cycles. As that number became large, then datasheets also dropped that specification. A number exists. But nobody cares.

100,000 power cycles was a typical drive life expectancy over 20 years ago. Since then, even that number became so large as to be irrelevant. And still some just know otherwise by ignoring numbers.

All devices are damaged by too many power cycles. The informed consumer never makes a hearsay conclusion from that subjective statement. The informed learn from numbers. Perspective (quantitative facts) is the difference between a subjectively educated victim and the informed consumer. Unfortunately too many recite popular hearsay (subjective reasoning) rather than first learn facts (quantitative reasoning).

Two common 'hearsay generated' conclusions are hardware damage from heat and power cycling. Ten degree temperature differences are also too tiny to affect electronic part life expectancy.

So why even bring up stuff from 10-15-50 years ago that has no bearing today? I certainly don't care either. :sarc:

westom · Oct 24, 2012

Britton30 said:
So why even bring up stuff from 10-15-50 years ago that has no bearing today?

Power cycling damage to drives is a number that says why power cycling causes virtually no damage. Your question should be directed at others who make damage claims by ignoring perspective (numbers).

You are expected to learn from history - stuff from 10-15-50 years ago. Junk science exists by ignoring perspective (numbers). Only victims and fools ignore stuff even known 10-15-50 years ago.

If you don't care, then why post? Oh. You do care. How much?

DeaconFrost · Oct 24, 2012

No one said damage. That was injected by you to further your eWang Competition. It can shorten the life of any electronic component. Try it with two identical light bulbs if you don't want to believe in the science and fact that you love to tout.

You're new here, so I'll offer this bit of advice. Coming across with the holier-than-thou mindset, inferring that all others who disagree with you are ignorant and fools....not the best tactic for longevity here.

Save the preachy hypothetical rhetoric for the proper audiences. We're here to help and assist.

bobafetthotmail · Oct 24, 2012

No one said damage.

"damage" doesn't mean failure. Every operation the device does it suffers some minimal damage, that accumulates and eventually causes a failure. (in the case of your light bulb, the filament slowly vapourizes and eventually becomes so thin that burns out)

In case you haven't noticed, he isn't claiming that the device life isn't shortened, but that it was so long that it does not matter.

And yes, it's normal to have components that are supposed to last 50 years. I have spotlights whose switch is rated for 10'000 uses (and they bother to tell me this detail on the box).

Britton30 said:
So why even bring up stuff from 10-15-50 years ago that has no bearing today?

Outdated info is good enough to give a lower limit (as components got better, not worse). That lower limit is still high enough to give an answer to the question of the OP.

DeaconFrost · Oct 24, 2012

bobafetthotmail said:
Every operation the device does it suffers some minimal damage, that accumulates and eventually causes a failure.

Yes, and powering on a drive is the most amount of strain and stress put on it. So that's why you'd want to minimize the amount of times you put the drive through that process.

MilesAhead · Oct 24, 2012

Hmm, I'm starting to feel I should be on the look-out for the old Mount Vertical vs Mount Horizontal argument!! This here discussion is civilized!! But I advise staying away from vert. v. horiz. as it tends to get nasty fast!!! One side won't stand for what the other proposes, and the opponents refuse to lay down no matter how much logic they are hit with!!

westom · Oct 24, 2012

DeaconFrost said:
No one said damage. That was injected by you to further your eWang Competition. It can shorten the life of any electronic component. Try it with two identical light bulbs if you don't want to believe in the science and fact that you love to tout.

Power cycling does not affect light bulb life expectancy. Life expectancy - also called damage or failure - is well defined by facts with numbers. Even published in an IES Handbook. The light bulb industry's 'bible'.

Power cycling does not appear in a list for life expectancy. Damage is caused by hours of operation and temperature (voltage). But many will speculate wildly. Will assume power cycling must be destructive.

That is the point. Knowledge means first learning perspective - the numbers. And by ignoring speculation. Only wild speculation says power cycling causes damage - shortens bulb life expectancy. If you know otherwise, then do not post your emotions. Post facts with numbers.

Power cycling is irrelevant to drive life expectancy. Numbers make that obvious ... 39 years even for drives of 20 years ago. Obsolecence is a more significant number.

bobafetthotmail - a switch speced for 10,000 cycles is cheap. Most switches are rated at least 100,000 cycles. Therefore many specifications no longer list that number. Curious they would even mentioned it.

westom · Oct 24, 2012

DeaconFrost said:
Yes, and powering on a drive is the most amount of strain and stress put on it.

Most strain and stress occurs with each head seek. Even that number is no longer specified because it is so large and now irrelevant.

bobafetthotmail · Oct 24, 2012

DeaconFrost said:
bobafetthotmail said:

Every operation the device does it suffers some minimal damage, that accumulates and eventually causes a failure.

Click to expand...

Yes, and powering on a drive is the most amount of strain and stress put on it. So that's why you'd want to minimize the amount of times you put the drive through that process.

The point here is that it's rated for (i.e. designed to endure) so much uses that it won't fail because of that accumulation of damage within its expected operational life, so why waste electricity?

If it's a lemon (defective) I want it to fail fast so I can RMA it while still under warranty.

I have shelves full of used 40-and-less GB hdds that were power cycled daily or more, work fine but are basically obsolete.
Really, this seems to me much more like superstition than anything else.

DeaconFrost · Oct 24, 2012

You seem to think I'm suggesting that a person leave their computer on 24x7 to avoid any "damage" by shutting down and then powering up. That certainly isn't the case. I have shelves of drives too, going back to some very small capacity IDE and SCSI drives, and they are all in working order. That's hardly a large enough sample size to prove anything one way or another, so all your insisting upon doing is arguing hypothetical concepts...which serves no one and will never reach a solution.

Britton30 · Oct 24, 2012

westom said:
Britton30 said:

So why even bring up stuff from 10-15-50 years ago that has no bearing today?

Click to expand...

Power cycling damage to drives is a number that says why power cycling causes virtually no damage. Your question should be directed at others who make damage claims by ignoring perspective (numbers).

You are expected to learn from history - stuff from 10-15-50 years ago. Junk science exists by ignoring perspective (numbers). Only victims and fools ignore stuff even known 10-15-50 years ago.

If you don't care, then why post? Oh. You do care. How much?

By the way, the Earth is round. I'm not a victim nor a fool. I just hate to see people like you posting so much info that is just wrong and irrelevant while pulling the long experience and "quantitative reasoning" card. It is entertaining though.

intel 4004 · Oct 25, 2012

All this talking is confusing me lol

DeaconFrost · Oct 25, 2012

intel 4004 said:
All this talking is confusing me lol

Because certain people want to derail the actual topic by making attempts to prove their intelligence to a bunch of strangers on an internet forum. That's what the eWang comment refers to.

The bottom line, to answer the topic at hand, is that it really doesn't matter. The choices given by the OP were to run their computer 24x7, or shut it down when not in use. Plenty of people chimed in on either side, and it really comes down to your own personal usage. If you use your computer at scattered times throughout the day, off and on, you might as well leave it run. If not, like me, where you use it for a session, and then probably not again until the next day, or a few days later, then shut it off. Pick the one that suits your usage patterns.

Britton30 · Oct 25, 2012

DeaconFrost said:
Because certain people want to derail the actual topic by making attempts to prove their intelligence to a bunch of strangers on an internet forum. That's what the eWang comment refers to.

The bottom line, to answer the topic at hand, is that it really doesn't matter. The choices given by the OP were to run their computer 24x7, or shut it down when not in use. Plenty of people chimed in on either side, and it really comes down to your own personal usage. If you use your computer at scattered times throughout the day, off and on, you might as well leave it run. If not, like me, where you use it for a session, and then probably not again until the next day, or a few days later, then shut it off. Pick the one that suits your usage patterns.

Big 10-4 good buddy. :thumbsup:

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