[Ichiban_jay]

Hey all, I recently bought a USB/Firewire hard drive because my laptop was running low on space and I wanted to have an image made just in case. I was wondering, is it possible to set some sort of spin-down time? You know, how my laptop's hard drive will stop when it is inactive, I know for the base hard drive there's that checkbox that says "Put my hard drive to sleep when possible" but does it apply with the external hard drive as well? Is it even possible? Thanks in advance!

[DMBand0026]

It's actually better to leave your hard drive to spin all the time. Back in the day it was best to let it spin down when it wasn't in use, but with today's hard disks being reliable and built how they are it's usually best to just let it spin all the time.

Long ago the most wear and tear you could put a hard drive through was letting it spin all the time, now the most wear and tear happens on spin up. Because of this, it's best to not to let it spin down if you don't have to. I'd recommend un-checking "spin down hard disk when possible."

I have a Sawtooth that's on constantly, the hard drives spin constantly, the longest such time was about 284 days in a row that the computer was on and the drives spun the whole time. The computer, as well as the drives, still work flawlessly.

[Ichiban_jay]

oh? That's extremely interesting! Time to reset all my comps... haha

[Brad]

Well, just note that your battery life is going to suffer a bit if you disable the spin-down option.

[Ichiban_jay]

of course. So for the laptop I will just keep the spin down going. But I am changing all my desktops to always spin...

Doh'eth me! That might be why one of my hard drive failed after 3 years... I had spin down at 3 minutes and it was used everyday... I can imagine how many times it spun down and spun up over and over again every 3 minutes as I was using it... I'm suprised now that it even lasted that long!

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by Brad Well, just note that your battery life is going to suffer a bit if you disable the spin-down option.

This is of course true, but in practice, at least with my usage (occasionally opening and closing files, opening and closing small apps like Calculator and Dictionary, often playing music from the disk, etc) I find that my hard disk only spins down a few times per battery charge, and when it does, it's up again within five minutes. This doesn't seem to have any noticeable effect on battery life.

Basically, I don't think it matters much for the average user whether you have your disk set to spin down or not. Certainly on a laptop I can't see a benefit to spinning down a USB disk. Surely if you're on battery power you won't have the external disk plugged in for longer than necessary? And if you're on mains power then keeping the disk spinning will probably be better for it.

Not an answer to your query but maybe you don't have a problem!