All for hard disk longevity and reliability

**oj88** · August 26th, 2009 09:45 AM

As the subject says, which method is best? Saving electricity is not really a priority.

I have five hard disks spinning in my desktop and another two in my Linux broadband gateway/NAS. These PC's are running 24x7.

**ghosthunter** · August 26th, 2009 10:59 AM

Personally I don't let it spin down if I want longevity for my HDD.

**1D4LV** · August 26th, 2009 11:09 AM

imho, hard disks are stressed tested by the manufacturer as part of their quality assurance processes. no need for the consumers to do some or extra activities for this. you just need to avoid certain things like extreme temperatures, extreme electrical spikes, humidity and dropping. and yes, backup is a must... for you can never tell when it will fail, even if you do certain activities which you think can make it function longer.

personal opinion ko lang. i have handled and managed lots of equipments and servers already and there is no surefire way.

**kulotz** · August 26th, 2009 11:20 AM

Originally Posted by 1D4LV

imho, hard disks are stressed tested by the manufacturer as part of their quality assurance processes. no need for the consumers to do some or extra activities for this. you just need to avoid certain things like extreme temperatures, extreme electrical spikes, humidity and dropping. and yes, backup is a must... for you can never tell when it will fail, even if you do certain activities which you think can make it function longer.

personal opinion ko lang. i have handled and managed lots of equipments and servers already and there is no surefire way.

extreme electrical spikes, dropping (kicking) yung nangyari sa akin kaya nasira hehe, extreme temperature pala nakakasira? awts lage mainit loob ng pc ko dahil sa MALAKEEE na heatsink ng videocard ko tsk

**Jun aka Pekto** · August 26th, 2009 11:26 AM

We've had Win XP clients tied in with Linux servers. All run 24/7. Two of the clients still have Pentium 3's and the old hard drives associated with them. I recall seeing them first around 2001. One of them had the hard drive finally crash last month. No warnings. It just simply quit. Kaput.

That's not too bad. The contractor sent a triple core Phenom tower as a replacement.

**1D4LV** · August 26th, 2009 10:24 PM

Originally Posted by Jun aka Pekto

We've had Win XP clients tied in with Linux servers. All run 24/7. Two of the clients still have Pentium 3's and the old hard drives associated with them. I recall seeing them first around 2001. One of them had the hard drive finally crash last month. No warnings. It just simply quit. Kaput.

That's not too bad. The contractor sent a triple core Phenom tower as a replacement.

- i had an experience naman before where a brand new server's hard disk conked out after four months. used under normal conditions, data center environment. good think is we did mirroring so recovery was a snap. and the supplier replaced the entire thing, not just the hard disk.

- meron naman kaming old server before that was converted to RH. before we converted it, the server was already running for four years. after conversion, we used it for another 5 years, before we decided to retire the hardware.

- we had a desktop computer before which we used for 10 years. walang bumigay na part. we just have to retire it dahil ang bagal na.

- and we had experienced another desktop which experienced a hard disk crash after only two months of use.

all of these computers/servers are within the required operating environments (dust free, data center areas, under high capacity UPS and the environment was installed with a TVSS). talagang depende sa equipment.

again, backup and a good recovery plan is the key...

**1D4LV** · August 26th, 2009 10:27 PM

Originally Posted by kulotz

extreme electrical spikes, dropping (kicking) yung nangyari sa akin kaya nasira hehe, extreme temperature pala nakakasira? awts lage mainit loob ng pc ko dahil sa MALAKEEE na heatsink ng videocard ko tsk

disks and other components get damaged by extreme temperature. they are designed to operate in certain temperature ranges. parang oto din yan.. pag di maganda ang cooling system mo, mag-ooverheat ka, which will damage your engine and other components. if your hardware internals are too hot because of your video card or other upgrades, probably you should review your cooling needs.