Effect on Drive Lifespan?

[Jim Leff]

I’m surprised the FAQ doesn’t include the expected(??) question about how this affects drive lifespan.

[Jon Stovell]

Perhaps surprisingly, it has rarely come up. I have a vague memory of someone asking once some years ago, but that about it.

Anyway, to answer your question:

Keep Drive Spinning is unlikely to have any noticeable difference on the lifespan of a hard disk drive (the kind that has spinning magnetic platters inside). Hard drive manufacturers don't publish information on this (or at least, not anywhere that I found), but generally speaking the lifespan of an HDD isn't materially affected by how much active use it gets. The main reason external HDDs spin down into low power mode is to save electricity, not to extend drive lifespan.

Keep Drive Spinning should not, however, be used on solid state drives (a.k.a. flash drives). The lifespan of an SSD is materially affected by how much active use it gets. Of course, there's no point in using Keep Drive Spinning on an SSD to being with, since SSDs never have any noticeable delay performing read or write operations.

[Jim Leff]

Thanks for the reply, Jon!

Re: saving electricity, I think I read that with KDS enabled, sleeping the CPU does spin down externals (so at least they don't go all night). Is that correct? 

I actually engage screen saver rather than sleep....is there a tweak that can be applied to KDS so externals spin down upon screen saver launch? Not a critical "ask", I'm just trying to understand......

[Jon Stovell]

Yes, that is correct.

It would be possible to create more complex conditions than the simple "once every x seconds" schedule, yes, but that would require rewriting significant sections of the code and creating a more complex user interface. I may implement that someday, but it won't be soon. :)

[Jim Leff]

OK, no biggie to retrain myself to sleep computer at night.

Only issue is that I want computer online 24/7 when out of town so I can access files. But if disks spin for a week or two at a time, shouldn’t be critical....

[Brandon Johnson]

With spinning disks, it's generally accepted that it's actually better for the drive to be run indefinitely.  A drive that never spins down will run for many many years.  That said, one that has run for many years could eventually have problems if allowed to get "cold" if powered down for a period of time.  The drive's read/write had can develop essentially "arthritis" and get stuck in its parked position.  In modern times though, people are usually replacing the drive or the whole computer before this really becomes an issue.