[mythtv-users] Re: A warning about Samsung HDDs

[Tony Lill]

I was kind of hoping for a guideline like each spinup is equavalent to
X hour of idle spinning. You can do the math for power consuption, but
I guess that wear and tear is a bit more difficult. 

I was looking at the specs for one of my drives and couldn't find a
lifetime in hours or mtbf, but it did say "Contact Start/Stop Cycles
50,000 minimum". If by that they mean spinup cycles, then if I wanted
it to last 10 years, I should limit spinups to less than 87600hr/50000
or every 1.7hr minimum, or, say, less than 10-15 per day. Probably way
too simplistic analysis, but hey.


Brady <liquidgecka at gmail.com> writes:

> I am not so sure about modern drives. They changed the way that they
> handle spindle connections after I stopped killing drives for a
> living. However I can tell you this: it is very common for a drive
> that has been spinning for long periods to simply not spin back up.
> The motor can continue spinning the drive but doesn't have enough
> power to start it spinning again. This is why a reboot of an entire
> cluster often means four or five systems keeling over due to bad
> fans/hard drives.
>
> Most drives will last a long time if left on. However, this is a bad
> things to rely on as the dive may just up and barf one reboot.
>
> Usually I find that spun down drives die far less often when paired
> with a cheap power supply. If your power supply isn't top notch then
> spin down your drive and reduce the risk of power problems. If you
> have top notch drives then keep them spinning so you can reduce the
> wear during start/stop. By high quality I am not just talking about
> "$100 or more" I am talking about a nice regulated supply that has
> tight tolerances.
>
> Mostly I go by a simple rule: A drive should only spin up/down about
> once per day.