Is turning off hard disks harmful?
Problem
I set Windows 7 to turn off hard disks after 20 minutes of nonuse, which it does a really good job at - it seems to turn off individual hard disks that have been idle for 20 minutes exactly. When I access a drive that I haven't used in 20 minutes, I can hear it firing up and it takes a couple of seconds to access it. Now Windows is turning off and turning on my hard disks several times a day. Can this on/offing be bad for the drives? The case is small and I'm trying to protect the drives from overheating really (they get VERY hot!). Edit: The accepted answer doesn't mention this explicitly, but from Minimizing hard disk drive failure Power cycling control Shutting down and rebooting a computer or resuming it from hibernation cycles the power to the drives in the computer. The spin-up operation performed by a drive after a power cycle is believed to place more stress on the drive than running the drive continuously for a long period of time. Based on professional experience of system a…
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1 Fix
Fix for: Is turning off hard disks harmful?
Google showed that heat has very little effect on hard drive life expectancy, despite anecdotal claims to the contrary. See this paper. The paper was by far the largest study on the subject. Note, though, that Google keeps their drives running 24/7, so there was no information on specifically whether turning off your hard drives was harmful, only that you don't need to worry so much about temperature.
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