Hard Drive Use (Page 2): Your best option for both the hard drives and your computer would be to invest in a quality battery backup system that will protect them from surges, brown...

NCMtnMan Loc: N. Fork New River, Ashe Co., NC

Your best option for both the hard drives and your computer would be to invest in a quality battery backup system that will protect them from surges, brown outs and power loss. The majority of power issues are from brown outs where the voltage drops, but not enough to cause a loss of power. This really works on electronics because they will try to correct the voltages and can really heat up components. Those power blips can cause damage to the drives in that it can cause the File Allocation Tables to become damaged and make it nearly impossible to retrieve anything off of them. The physical drive itself isn't damaged, just the info of where things are located.

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

Everything is STILL like everything else.
We like comparing apples and wombats.
We've been comparing 10 year old FX cameras with 1 year old DXs, for quality and performance.
And 50 year old Nikon FX lenses with 1 year old Canon DXs.

Anybody else remeber the "Seagate Slam"? The difference between the red and the green lights?
I used to carry a tube of silicone spindle grease and a syringe to relube the bearings. Fans and drives.
Did you buy an IBM HDD before "The Turn of the Century"? Low level format > 10 to 15% loss > OK.
And Raid0 was "scary raid" because you were gambling on your backups to save you WHEN it happened.
These days, tho ...
I have an old G-raid that saves my sorry butt regularly. It gets treated kinda rough tho. No problems.
I have a pair of HGST 3tb in Raid0 that I just don't worry about. Never any problems.
The heads float on air, as do the bearings. The platters are harder, smoother, cleaner. Last U long time!
The SSDs worry me. Some SSDs say they're good for 3000 actions ?!?!
Howza bout a camera with no guarantee after 3k shutter actions?

This 10+ year old MacPro has been mostly on for @ 3 years. Reboot on Sundays. Mostly.
The HDD spinners and fans are the only moving parts- and they don't wear out anymore.

cahale Loc: San Angelo, TX

You will hear disagreement from many on this, but; leave your computer on. More disk failures occur during startup than any other time. I leave my desktop on continually, unless I am going to be gone more than 4 days. The next time you feel the need for another hard drive, go with SSD. Faster, and no moving parts to break down.

crphoto8 Loc: Anaheim, California

TonyBrown wrote:

I have Toshiba and WD hard drives. The Toshiba is over a year old and the WD is fairly new. So far the Toshiba has been fine(fingers crossed). However, I do have one question. Is it better to shut the hard drive down after each use or keep it running. I know that external drives are prone to failure and it would be helpful to know if there is any increased risk of failure with continually shutting down or keeping the drive connected to my computer.

My 2 cents...

My PC has a SSD C: drive, 3 internal HDs. I turn on the PC every morning, shut it down at the end of the day. All my stuff resides on the internal HDS. Then I have 5 external HDs which I use once a week for backup purposes only with Acronis and SyncToy. I turn on the external HDs just before backup, then shut them down for the rest of the week. My assumption is that this process will increase the life of the external HDs. Also, I make several backups on different HDs just in case there's a failure there. An overkill? Maybe, but I have peace of mind.

ralf Loc: NJ

I have external hard drives (La Cie) on an iMac. I shut everything down every night before going to bed. Power off - not "sleep" mode. I've been doing this for years with no issues.

All HD's are subject to failure, so make sure you have backups of your data. My hard drive config tells how seriously I take backups: (1) 8TB drive for data, (2) 8TB drive for backups #1, (3) 20TB drive for backups #2 -- and for backups of other computers in our house. Which means I gave 3 copies of everything. I have occasionally used the backup/restore facility on the iMac (and a Mac Mini) to recover lost files. In each case, I found multiple copies of the files I was after.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

CindyHouk wrote:

Are these internal drives or external?

Are you talking about shutting down your computer after each use? I have 2 internal drives in my system and I leave my computer turned on 24/7 and reboot it once a week or when there are updates that need applied.

As for the 2 external drives I use...I leave them plugged into the usb on the systems and never disconnect them.

Hope that helps.
Cindy

While I only have 1 each, I keep them on.

BBurns Loc: South Bay, California

TriX wrote:

I will just note that a large percentage of drive failures occur during start up.

I will add my own observations. I had a 486 Novell 3.11 server that had not been rebooted in 7 years.
It had to be brought down due to an extended power outage that was beyond the UPS's capability of 28-30 hours.
It was off for about 10 hours, enough time to get cold. It never came back online.
Fortunately, it was being mirrored by an offsite server so nothing was lost or interrupted.

If a drive has been running for a long time, i.e. 6 months to multiple years, there is a good chance it may not spin up again.
Drives that have set dormant for long periods also may not spin up again.

Enterprise rated drives are designed to run. They are on 24/7. This is why they are worth the extra money.

Most external drives are not the top of the line. Stay as far away as you can from 'Green' drives.

jaredjacobson

One other thing to consider is ransomware/cryptoware viruses. Many of them are smart enough to hit a mounted USB drive and start encrypting your data so you can’t recover it. if the USB drive is off when you are not using it, you reduce the chance of this happening. The virus can’t encrypt a drive that’s not attached.

I had a friend lose all her family‘s digital photos this way.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

jaredjacobson wrote:

One other thing to consider is ransomware/cryptoware viruses. Many of them are smart enough to hit a mounted USB drive and start encrypting your data so you can’t recover it. if the USB drive is off when you are not using it, you reduce the chance of this happening. The virus can’t encrypt a drive that’s not attached.

I had a friend lose all her family‘s digital photos this way.

THAT'S a good thought!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

BBurns wrote:

I will add my own observations. I had a 486 Novell... (show quote)

My HDD in the tower is an Enterprise drive (WD GOLD 2Tb). I got it for that reason, and the MTBF is REALLY high. Costs twice as much as a "regular" drive, but VERY worth it to me. I hate replacing internal drives. My tower is set to sleep after about three or four hours of non-use. The longest the tower is "off" is when we are on vacation. Enterprise drives are burned-in, so all the early life failures have been weeded out.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

BBurns wrote:

I will add my own observations. I had a 486 Novell... (show quote)

Interesting. I had the same experience. I had a NetApp NAS that we took on trade for a new system, and since it was so small (16x 4GB Fujitsu drives), it was headed to the trash. I set it up in my unheated and uncooled basement, and it ran for ~10 years (on top of the 4 years in service before it was retired) 24x7 without a drive failure. I took it down for a day, and when i started it up, 4 drives failed, so I retired it. Btw, it had enterprise class drives and 4 big (and loud) fans. It’s all about getting quality drives and keeping them cool.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

TonyBrown wrote:

I have Toshiba and WD hard drives. The Toshiba is over a year old and the WD is fairly new. So far the Toshiba has been fine(fingers crossed). However, I do have one question. Is it better to shut the hard drive down after each use or keep it running. I know that external drives are prone to failure and it would be helpful to know if there is any increased risk of failure with continually shutting down or keeping the drive connected to my computer.

Almost all hard drive failures occur on startup because of surges. 15 years ago or so when I was working we had the computers all over the place in the failure on them almost always occurred from smoke and dust getting into the drives. I'll leave mine on 24/7 and reboot twice a week the clear out everything haven't had a problem on my systems personally in over 15 years.

Bill_de Loc: US

TriX wrote:

I will just note that a large percentage of drive failures occur during start up.

Or shut down, You just don't know it until you turn the computer back on.

--

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Bill_de wrote:

Or shut down, You just don't know it until you turn the computer back on.

--

Can’t argue with that

TheShoe Loc: Lacey, WA

TonyBrown wrote:

I have Toshiba and WD hard drives. The Toshiba is over a year old and the WD is fairly new. So far the Toshiba has been fine(fingers crossed). However, I do have one question. Is it better to shut the hard drive down after each use or keep it running. I know that external drives are prone to failure and it would be helpful to know if there is any increased risk of failure with continually shutting down or keeping the drive connected to my computer.

My internal drive is Toshiba and it has been running over 5 years. I usually shut the system down every night. My external drive is WD. It is older than the internal drive. Neither drive has ever given me any problems, and both pass the HD diagnostics and stress tests without error.