Power down disk drive or not - when used two or three times per day

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2022 09:34:35 +0000, Chris Green wrote:
>Is it *really* a good idea to spin down and up twice (or occasionally)
>three times a day (plus of course any use I make of the backups) or
>should I configure a 'keep alive' process that stops it spinning down?
>
>Power consumption is trivial, so power saving isn't an issue, I'm
>more concerned about longevity.

Hi,

in my experiences 3 times parking and spinning up a day and your HDDs
will likely die after around 2 years, if you let them run 24/7 they
likely last for around 7 years. IOW to run the drives 24/7 is
even better for the ecological footprint.

Until the beginning of this year I didn't turn of my desktop PC,
equipped with SSDs only. Since the beginning of this year electricity
is that expensive in Germany, that scarcely anybody, excepted of a few
very rich people, are still able to use electrical appliances to a
normal extend at all, hence I turn of the PC whenever possible. This is
way more worse for the ecological footprint, then to run even a SSD
equipped PC 24/7, but you can't expect the rich and privileged German
Green party idiots to understand this.

Some Germans might become aware of the fatal dimension next year, after
they get the next bill, when they don't get power anymore and the
court officer is knocking on their doors. I suspect that a lot of
people don't really understand the current price of electricity. they
will understand the dimension when it's too late.

Btw. electricity is that expensive, because electricity providers
gambled, it has nothing to do with green taxes, but it affects the
ecological footprint, if more hardware gets broken, because it needs to
get turned on and off and on and off and ... .

Regards,
Ralf