seagate 100gb external harddrive

[dznutz]

i just purchased a 100gb seagate external usb 2.0 hd and wondering what's the best way to preserve the life of this hd - either run torrents directly from this or run it in a computer then copy over the files. i'm thinking of choice 2 since choice 1 forces the hd to spin everytime it writes something.... or perhaps both are effective due to disk caching. what are your opinions. thanks.

[maku8ex]

yeah choice 2 would be slightly better for ur HDD ( considering it is external ) ....but even if u run UT directly on it....it wont make the HDD so active....if the cache is properly set, then ur HD will be accesed only when absolutely required...

but since it is an external HDD maybe u should go with choice 2.... cuz it's better to keep it safe ( since u can use it for transfers & all )

[The Mighty Buzzard]

What is it with people thinking using a hard drive will kill it lately? Buy a quality drive, like seagate, instead of crap and use the hell out of the thing. I'd be far more worried about a drive crashing on reboot or power-down than I would from overuse. I can't tell you how many times I've found spontaneous religion when having to reboot a server for some reason.

[1c3d0g]

Well in the title he did say that it was a Seagate drive...

[silverfire]

I feel extremely sorry for you. You have a 100-MEGABYTE drive, and you're still using it in this day and age? Upgrade to something measured in gigabytes - it shouldn't be that expensive for a 1GB disk

[1c3d0g]

I think he meant 100 GB...

[silverfire]

Oh I knew that's what he mean, but i couldn't reist

[dznutz]

sorry guys. i meant "100kb" external hard drive. :cool:

if downloading via torrents require constant writes what about seeding?

thanks

[silverfire]

Well first of all, the write cache ensures that it isn't a constant write, and there's a read cache that also gets used during seeding.

[splintax]

sorry guys. i meant "100kb" external hard drive. :cool:

so it's not as massive as we thought

[castle]

it's actually just 100b

[Technarch]

Be aware that external usb enclosures do not spin down the drive for whatever reason. Test it for yourself and see. Maybe firewire does I have no idea.

So if you have an enclosure that is powered up, be aware the drive will be spinning the whole time. If that doesn't matter, then that's ok. In a computer you can spin down a drive.

I have an enclosure for both 2.5 and 3.5 but I use them differently.

[Firon]

It's better to not spin the drive down, in all honesty. I don't let my drives spin down/.

[1c3d0g]

Yeah, spinning up/down is worse than leaving a drive on all the time...all part of basic physics, IIRC. :/

[Technarch]

A 2.5 drive though, has much less inertia and is designed for precisely this behavior, so it won't have the same adverse effect that it would on a 3.5.

That said, if you know the drive isn't going to be accessed for let's say a day, might as well turn it off or spin it down. Days go by between uses of my 2.5, no sense leaving it turned on the whole time.

Also a spun down drive is quieter on the computer.

[Firon]

I guess so.

[splintax]

Hmm, how do you configure the spinning up/down thing?

[Firon]

Power Options in the CP

[Klyith]

Firon: It's better to not spin the drive down, in all honesty. I don't let my drives spin down/.

1c3d0g: Yeah, spinning up/down is worse than leaving a drive on all the time...all part of basic physics, IIRC.

A consumer (S)ATA drive gets more wear when it spins up than when it is running. Especially recent drives with Fluid Bearing motors, they don't properly lubricate until they're spinning. But a couple hours of the drive not spinning more than compensates for the extra wear when it spins up. So having the drive set in windows to Always On is fine if you turn your computer off at night. If you leave it on 24/7, it is not a bad idea to set it to spin down, but with a high wait time 1-3 hours). Of course, if you're doing torrents on a drive it'll never spin down cause it will always be active. But as long as you have a good case that pushes air over the drives to keep em cool, running 24/7 won't hurt them too badly.

For external drives, it's more about the heat than the physical wear. They are not meant to be on 24/7, and if you use one that way it is sure to die sooner than otherwise. Dan's Data just did a story about that.

Also, different drives are engineered to do different things. The little microdrives in iPods etc are very good at spinning up and down, and have more problems when spinning too much. They want to turn off whenever possible. Laptop drives are also optimized to spin up/down more often, since that's a way to preserve batteries. Server drives are the opposite, they're designed to be always on.

[silverfire]

I think it's generally fine to assume that the faster it spins normally, the more damaging it'd be to spin up and down as a direct result of physics. That holds true with what you said about iPod microdrives and server drives since if my memory serves me correctly, microdrives spin at much lower than 4,200RPM while server drives are at or over 10,000RPM.

[dznutz]

about the current discussion on spinning up and down.....

do you guys know for a fact that seagate never spins down? from my experience it does spin down. although it's quiet and i can't hear the spinning i'm assuming it spins down because:

1. there's a delay after not using the drive for a couple of minutes. for instance if you want to use something it'll take a couple of seconds to prepare something.

2. the fan can only be felt at times. these times are when (i'm assuming) it is spinning. so when you're not using the drive the fan can't be felt.

however, there are some facts that may support that the external hd does spin constantly.

1. the blue power indicator doesn't go off until you yank out the usb.