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  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill & Debbie
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Bill & Debbie

Assuming an external USB hard drive is connected and powered up, does usage
have anything to do with wear and heat? I ask because I have one and I play
my music from it for long periods of time. The drive gets pretty warm. Is
that a concern? If I were using the drive to say access financial data just
every now and then, would the wear and heat results be the same?

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge,
Bill
 
external USB hard drive is connected and powered up, does usage > have
anything to do with wear and heat?

Yess, Seek operation draws significantly more power than just idling.
I ask because I have one and I play my music from it for long
periods of time. The drive gets pretty warm. Is that a concern?
Click to expand...

It is.
If I were using the drive to say access financial data just every
now and then, would the wear and heat results be the same?
Click to expand...

Since music-playing should actually be a lower-load operation,
the thermal load would probably be similar.

Arno
 
Bill & Debbie said:
Assuming an external USB hard drive is connected and powered up, does usage have anything to do
with wear and heat?
Click to expand...

Not wear, but most externals dont cool the drive properly and thats
the reason that no manufacturer offers better than a 1 year warranty,
even tho the drives have a 3-5 year warranty when used inside the PC.
I ask because I have one and I play my music from it for long periods of time. The drive gets
pretty warm. Is that a concern?
Click to expand...

Yes, its not good for the drive.
If I were using the drive to say access financial data just every now and then, would the wear and
heat results be the same?
Click to expand...

Yes, you need to turn it off to stop it being hot for so long.
 
Bill said:
Assuming an external USB hard drive is connected and powered up, does usage
have anything to do with wear and heat? I ask because I have one and I play
my music from it for long periods of time. The drive gets pretty warm. Is
that a concern? If I were using the drive to say access financial data just
every now and then, would the wear and heat results be the same?

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge,
Bill
Click to expand...
Put a fan on it.
If it runs cool when not being accessed, try actively cacheing your
music files on the internal drive.
Failing that, copy 10 GIGs or so at a time to your local drive and play
from there. Turn off the usb drive.
Copy your music collection to DVD and play from there.
I worried about laser life, so I wrote a little program to read the DVD,
cache a tune to the hard drive and play from there. Cuts DVD on-time
by factor of 20 or more. I run that on a dedicated dumpster-class
laptop.
mike
 
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