*Fixed* Better to Spin down HD or keep them running

[Blitz1776]

So I've recently built my own Fileserver NAS to store my files etc. However what I was trying to decide was the back and forth question of do I leave the hard drives spinning constantly or should I have them spin down. I currently have it set to 30 mins so that the main drive will stayed spinned up since it should be in use most of the time etc. However I'm not sure if this will put any actual undue stress on the NAS since I want to keep it in good shape as long as possible.

I tend to offload the files or add new things to the storage drives about once a week or so.

TLDR: Better to leave drives spinning or let them spin down if files are being accessed only once or twice a week.

Appreciate the help on this matter.

 

[Fear No Evil]

Well, for what its worth.. servers don't power down their drives and the most common time for failure is at power up. A spinning idle drive doesn't put much wear and tear on it.

That being said, I do power down my 'storage' drives because I may only use them once a day and I'd like to save some power.

 

[pcunite]

What is more important to you? Leave them running to make them last longer.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

personally, I don't believe the issue of spin-up causing excessive wear on the drives. Most enterprise storage arrays now include some type of spin-down feature. Engineers have told me that the less time a drive spends spinning, the longer it will last...I'm still sceptical, but I don't get paid to engineer storage systems, so I just take their word for it. I have around 16TB at home on various systems and I either power down the whole system when it's not doing backups or I will spin down the data sets. When configured correctly, it works really well. I have had cases where bugs in the OS cause the drives to constantly spin back up, and that is definitely a bad thing.

 

[Russwinters]

It's pretty even.


Leaving the drive spinning will wear the bearing faster, but the bearing is built to last a *really* long time.

Stop/start cycles will cause the heads to park, most drives are spec'd for ~300,000 load/unload cycles, which can go really fast.

 

[dbcooper1]

This has been debated for as long as I can remember. I think it comes down to this- you basically get to decide how your drive is most likely to die. Either the bearing wears out from many hours of spinning during nonuse or the motor that spins it or the circuitry that drives the motor fails because of spinup cycles. Either way, the effect is pretty much the same and if it were clear cut one way or the other, we wouldn't still be debating it all these years later.

 

[EarthwormJim]

Spinning down the drives will help keep them cooler, so depending on how well the cooling system on your NAS is doing, that might help.

Didn't the google hard drive study find that drives left in the 40-45c range failed the least, while drives kept under or above that failed a bit more?

 

[dbcooper1]

Then there's the whole issue of thermal expansion/contraction and how it affects things mechanical and electrical over time. I haven't read a good study of this whole issue in years; just decided it was close either way and inconclusive in general. If anyone has read up on it, I'd be interested in hearing the latest and a link. thanks

 

[Emulex]

^^ keep them running at a constant temperature - otherwise shut them down.

with ssd this isn't such a a big deal eh?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Then there's the whole issue of thermal expansion/contraction and how it affects things mechanical and electrical over time. I haven't read a good study of this whole issue in years; just decided it was close either way and inconclusive in general. If anyone has read up on it, I'd be interested in hearing the latest and a link. thanks

There's quite a few papers on this published on ieee.

Here's one that goes over spin ups/downs and speed changes vs. reliability.

http://rapidshare.com/files/436959293/04536247.pdf

It actually does look like start stop cyles add quite a bit to the failure rate. They gave an example, 10 start/stops a day adds .15 to the AFR (annualized failure rate) of a disk older than one year.

Start stop cycles places wear on the head, and the spindle motor.

 

[tweakboy]

Yes I agree, always on is best!

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

I run mine always on, and never spin them down. The exception is the gf's system which I have set to hibernate/sleep.

 

[Concillian]

A LONG time ago start / stop cycles was a major issue. You don't hear so much about heads stuck to platters or needing to slap a drive on startup to break them loose anymore. Drives will generally be replaced before spindown / startup is an issue.

I used to leave mine on all the time, but I now shutdown a few times a day. 100,000 start / stop cycles is 54 cycles a day for 5 years, and 5 years is when I replace drives, I definitely do not start stop 54 times a day, and most drives are rated for more than 100,000 start stop cycles.

IMO longevity is not an issue either way, so I do what saves power.

 

[EarthwormJim]

A LONG time ago start / stop cycles was a major issue. You don't hear so much about heads stuck to platters or needing to slap a drive on startup to break them loose anymore. Drives will generally be replaced before spindown / startup is an issue.

I used to leave mine on all the time, but I now shutdown a few times a day. 100,000 start / stop cycles is 54 cycles a day for 5 years, and 5 years is when I replace drives, I definitely do not start stop 54 times a day, and most drives are rated for more than 100,000 start stop cycles.

IMO longevity is not an issue either way, so I do what saves power.

100,000 is a mean value. Assuming exponential distribution, the chance that it will last 100,000 cycles or longer is only around 37%.

Looking at it further, the chance that a drive will only last at most 25,000 cycles is close to 25%.

Unless you have a data center, I wouldn't worry about the power issue. You're only talking a few watts per drive.

 

[Rifter]

Yes I agree, always on is best!

I agree with tweakboy!

 

[Russwinters]

A LONG time ago start / stop cycles was a major issue. You don't hear so much about heads stuck to platters or needing to slap a drive on startup to break them loose anymore. Drives will generally be replaced before spindown / startup is an issue.

I used to leave mine on all the time, but I now shutdown a few times a day. 100,000 start / stop cycles is 54 cycles a day for 5 years, and 5 years is when I replace drives, I definitely do not start stop 54 times a day, and most drives are rated for more than 100,000 start stop cycles.

IMO longevity is not an issue either way, so I do what saves power.

Actually, heads get stuck to platters quite often.

Western Digital Scorpios are especially bad about this. Has something to do with the lubricant they use on the platters is my hypothesis.

Slider likes to get ripped off of the HSA, causing the heads to park under the ramp, and scrape away substrate as well, luckily no data is in this area because it is accounted for ramp clearance.

 

[Ms. DICKINSON]

I had 2 WD HDDs failure due to spin down.

 

[Blitz1776]

Jeeze seems like the matter is still pretty split on it with a slight lean toward leaving them on. I think in the end I'm going to let them spin down, but as said I only use them (about once or twice a week) when I need to add stuff to the archive, and that's usually the period where I might copy stuff from the archive over to my primary drives, to watch, use, etc.

However please keep the discussion rolling if anybody has any concrete evidence concerning it. I would actually love to know the answer if there is something conclusive .

 

[Russwinters]

The other problem is that a lot of drives are now programmed in the firmware to park the heads when not used for "x" amount of time. Especially any of the new 5400RPM "Eco" or "green" drives.

You can tell because if you leave a drive on for maybe a month straight, and check the SMART you will notice that the power cycle count is not increasing (obviously) but the load/unload cycle count will have increased by a few hundred. =(



Notebook drives do this ALOT to.


I suspect notebook drives will on average only last maybe 2 or 3 years, even if well taken care of, any longer you are running on "luck".

 

[n7]

I'd leave them then on unless you have power concerns.

Russwinters knows his stuff!

I'm no expert, but i deal with lots of failing HDDs every week & i'd have to say i think the starting & stopping isn't helping anything, especially on notebooks as mentioned.

I cannot wait until storage with moving parts is a thing of the past.
Though the fun thing about SSDs it seems is that there's often little to no warning when they die :\