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Leaving external HD on indefinitely...bad?
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Sep 2003
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I have a 500g LaCie HD used for Time Machine. What are the longterm effects of leaving this HD on permanently in standby mode? I've left my Mac on for the past 5 or 6 years w/o problem, but will an external HD that always seems to be running (even in standby as it still backs up my stuff) hurt its lifetime?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Sep 2006
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They measure the life span of hard drives in "Mean Time Between Failures". It is common for that number to be in the hundreds of thousands of hours. For every one who claims that leaving it on will wear it out, there is another person who argue that turning it on and off subjects it to electrical and mechanical damage. As long as you have a backup plan, you are doing the right thing.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
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Doesn't your drive do to sleep (spin-down) after a pre-determined amount of time?
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Forum Regular
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Canada
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Some externals will spin-down from inactivity wether you want them to or not. It can be controlled by the firmware in the enclosure's chipset. I've heard some drives are only rated for 3k spin-ups. If that's the case and you use the drives often, it's better to leave it running.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Sep 2000
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One thing's for certain. It will waste electricity.
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
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Originally Posted by rjenkinson 
One thing's for certain. It will waste electricity.
And one more thing's for certain, it will take up space in your room and displace air.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Feb 2008
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I can't see a problem with this, Foxdog. In principle it's not all that different from a server running 24-7. Sure, there are programmable sleep times, etc., but I can't see it making much of a difference leaving it on.
Cheers,
Rob.
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Administrator  Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: San Antonio TX USA
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Originally Posted by rjenkinson
One thing's for certain. It will waste electricity.
Thus the reason so many external drive systems automatically spin down when not in use. My network drive has a setting called "HDD Sleep Time" which comes factory set at 10 minutes, but is changeable to any value from 5 to 60 minutes, and can be disabled. Lots of flexibility. I've found that the "adapter cable" devices (like enclosures but without the enclosure itself) don't always have a sleep function, but other than that, external drives should be fine staying "on" 24/7, and will waste very little electricity.
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Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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