1. Faster access times
The drive is ready to access data immediately, which can improve responsiveness, especially for frequently used files.
2. Reduced wear on the motor
Spinning up and down the motor creates more wear than constant operation.
Drawbacks of keeping HDDs spinning
1. Increased power consumption
HDDs use more power when spinning, which can be a concern if you're looking to save energy.
2. More noise
HDDs generate some noise when spinning, which might be noticeable in a quiet environment.
3. Potential for slight wear
While less than stopping and starting, there's still some minor wear on the bearings from constant spinning.
Finding a balance
Most operating systems have built-in settings that allow you to configure your HDDs to spin down after a period of inactivity. This can be a good compromise between performance and energy efficiency.
Here are some additional factors to consider
A. How often you access the HDD: If you frequently access the drive, keeping it spinning might make sense.
B. The noise level: If noise is a concern, you might want to spin down the drives more aggressively.
C. Your power consumption goals: If you're looking to save energy, spinning down the drives is a good option.
Stuff I access regularly are all on SSDs and backed up once a day for the important stuff I want to keep. Stuff I keep on hard drives are accessed maybe once a day if at all, so in my personal usage, I let them spin down after ~10 minutes of no activity.
If you've got significant thermal stresses when you power on, that's going to be painful whatever the hardware is; thermal stress causes cracking causes failure.
HDDs have bearings that eventually fail. SSDs have their own limitations (not that they matter for light usage).
Most of the time, modern storage media endures pretty well when not abused. There are some exceptions (such as some types of CDROM) but most do really well.
unless you are constantly accessing it (which you shouldn't, ssds are for that), no.
and those that tell you otherwise are all morons, there is no data saying that starting and stopping a couple of times a day wears the drive more than having it constantly spin 24/7 for no fricking reason
everyone in the year 2024
you only use them as backups or to store stuff you only need once in a while, everyhing else is on your ssd
also learn english
Explain to me how am I supposed to store shit on a 128 GiB SSD. Even compression isn't helping that much
2 months ago
Anonymous
save up for a 1tb nvme (if you have a m.2 slot)
ssd's are pretty cheap nowadays, people are even throwing them out (along with an entire pc around it)
>be me >clean offices and recycling building at local refuse transfer station >check e-waste bin on the regular >"Oh a HP Prodesk G1, nice." >in basically perfect condition, judging by exterior >take it home and open it up >wat? >i5 4590 >16GB DDR3 >GTX 1050Ti 4GB Low Profile >Team (never heard of them btw) 512GB Sata SSD >SSD barely has 200hrs on it >mfw
2 months ago
Anonymous
>ssd's are pretty cheap nowadays
Frick I wish they were. 4TB SSDs are still well over $200 USD, and anything higher capacity is prohibitively expensive or doesn't exist.
2 months ago
Anonymous
t. poorgay
Quit b***hing about <1tb SSDs having too littlr space, go out and get a 1tb - thank me later.
spinning up and down is the greatest stress, companies tell you they force power down to save power but it's really to shorten lifespan so you buy another drive sooner
if i dont set that to 0 then my pc goes to sleep and stops downloading over night with monitor turned off. just disable hybernation and sleep and set that to 0 king
The longest lived PCs I worked with were old 486s with SCSI CD-ROM four bay towers the USAF used for Fed Log. They were not networked, ran WFW well into the 2000s and seemingly never died. They were in frequent daily use sitting on every unit Supply counter.
yes. i used to store my nsfw browser (firefox portable) on my bitlocker encrypted external hdd. After a few years, it loaded extremely slow; 1-2 minutes for all the bookmark icons to load. So, i moved the folder containing my browser to an encrpyted nvme drive. web browser loads instantly now. it's a no-brainer
I only have SSDs in my computer so I just set that timeout to 1 minute. I assume either it does nothing for SSDs or it just puts them in some "low power" state that barely takes any time to exit.
Always spinning is better than spinning up and down every 20 minutes, but worse than spinning up once a day
>t. spinner
Benefits of keeping HDDs spinning
1. Faster access times
The drive is ready to access data immediately, which can improve responsiveness, especially for frequently used files.
2. Reduced wear on the motor
Spinning up and down the motor creates more wear than constant operation.
Drawbacks of keeping HDDs spinning
1. Increased power consumption
HDDs use more power when spinning, which can be a concern if you're looking to save energy.
2. More noise
HDDs generate some noise when spinning, which might be noticeable in a quiet environment.
3. Potential for slight wear
While less than stopping and starting, there's still some minor wear on the bearings from constant spinning.
Finding a balance
Most operating systems have built-in settings that allow you to configure your HDDs to spin down after a period of inactivity. This can be a good compromise between performance and energy efficiency.
Here are some additional factors to consider
A. How often you access the HDD: If you frequently access the drive, keeping it spinning might make sense.
B. The noise level: If noise is a concern, you might want to spin down the drives more aggressively.
C. Your power consumption goals: If you're looking to save energy, spinning down the drives is a good option.
Kys jeetPT nocoder
Stuff I access regularly are all on SSDs and backed up once a day for the important stuff I want to keep. Stuff I keep on hard drives are accessed maybe once a day if at all, so in my personal usage, I let them spin down after ~10 minutes of no activity.
Ditch the HDD altogether and get an 8tb Nvme ssd as your only drive in your system. You're not a poor fav are you?
in windows the disks would resume spinning without any reason even if you are not using them...just keep them spinning
turning lightbulbs on and off is mostly what breaks them, probably similar for hdds
t. 12yoe mechanical engineer
If you've got significant thermal stresses when you power on, that's going to be painful whatever the hardware is; thermal stress causes cracking causes failure.
HDDs have bearings that eventually fail. SSDs have their own limitations (not that they matter for light usage).
Most of the time, modern storage media endures pretty well when not abused. There are some exceptions (such as some types of CDROM) but most do really well.
why would i listen to a 12 year old, underage b&
unless you are constantly accessing it (which you shouldn't, ssds are for that), no.
and those that tell you otherwise are all morons, there is no data saying that starting and stopping a couple of times a day wears the drive more than having it constantly spin 24/7 for no fricking reason
who access just a couple of time a day in their hdds?
everyone in the year 2024
you only use them as backups or to store stuff you only need once in a while, everyhing else is on your ssd
also learn english
>everyone in the year 2024
normie detected
>normie
Normalgay detected
I only install programs in the ssd, everything is on my array of hdd, always spinning
I'll not learn any more english than this because I don't care
Explain to me how am I supposed to store shit on a 128 GiB SSD. Even compression isn't helping that much
save up for a 1tb nvme (if you have a m.2 slot)
ssd's are pretty cheap nowadays, people are even throwing them out (along with an entire pc around it)
>be me
>clean offices and recycling building at local refuse transfer station
>check e-waste bin on the regular
>"Oh a HP Prodesk G1, nice."
>in basically perfect condition, judging by exterior
>take it home and open it up
>wat?
>i5 4590
>16GB DDR3
>GTX 1050Ti 4GB Low Profile
>Team (never heard of them btw) 512GB Sata SSD
>SSD barely has 200hrs on it
>mfw
>ssd's are pretty cheap nowadays
Frick I wish they were. 4TB SSDs are still well over $200 USD, and anything higher capacity is prohibitively expensive or doesn't exist.
t. poorgay
Quit b***hing about <1tb SSDs having too littlr space, go out and get a 1tb - thank me later.
spinning up and down is the greatest stress, companies tell you they force power down to save power but it's really to shorten lifespan so you buy another drive sooner
same applies to your computer components
Very old guy here.
My first HDD was 10MB so.....
But today..... Set the timeout at ~~1 week and be happy.... 🙂
They can run fine for days and all. But if you really are not using them at all, shut them down.
if i dont set that to 0 then my pc goes to sleep and stops downloading over night with monitor turned off. just disable hybernation and sleep and set that to 0 king
The longest lived PCs I worked with were old 486s with SCSI CD-ROM four bay towers the USAF used for Fed Log. They were not networked, ran WFW well into the 2000s and seemingly never died. They were in frequent daily use sitting on every unit Supply counter.
DEC PDP-11.............
If they are not still using the actual hardware, the emulators....
But only to control nuclear missiles ans such :DDDD
Should I put my internet browser on my ssd?
yes. i used to store my nsfw browser (firefox portable) on my bitlocker encrypted external hdd. After a few years, it loaded extremely slow; 1-2 minutes for all the bookmark icons to load. So, i moved the folder containing my browser to an encrpyted nvme drive. web browser loads instantly now. it's a no-brainer
what about the constant writes?
I've always ran my HDDs 24/7 spinning
Now I only have a WD Purple which I keep always spinning, they're supposed to work like that, I guess.
Honestly I think 20 minutes is too low anyways, set it to an hour, if you want to keep it off a bit.
I only have SSDs in my computer so I just set that timeout to 1 minute. I assume either it does nothing for SSDs or it just puts them in some "low power" state that barely takes any time to exit.
>jpg
How do you manage this in Linux? Is there a way to control disk spin up times?
is it okay to keep my backup hdd plugged in if it's unmounted or will it still degrade?