Repeated powering of hard drive versus continuous running?

[Joe S.]

Is it better to get XP to power down my hard drives after, say, 5 or
10 minutes of non-use or should I leave the drives running all day
long?

------

The details are as follows. I use my PC at home in a small office
and I want to minimize the chance of hard drive failure by treating
my hard drives carefully.

My WinXP PC usually takes as long as 4 minutes to start up from cold
and in my case they this can't easily be improved.

I need quick access to the PC and Internet, so I leave the PC on all
day from 8am to 10pm. It gets used for about 20 minutes every couple
of hours but the pattern is not regular and there is a lot of
variability.

Starting up/powering down a hard drive is more strain than continuous
running, so would my hard drives be more likely to fail from:

(a) Repeated power up/power down, if I set XP to power down after 5
to 10 mins of non-use (is this a good value?)?

(b) Extended periods of continuous running, if I let the hard drives
run continuously through the day?

 

[John McGaw]

Is it better to get XP to power down my hard drives after, say, 5 or
10 minutes of non-use or should I leave the drives running all day
long?

------

The details are as follows. I use my PC at home in a small office
and I want to minimize the chance of hard drive failure by treating
my hard drives carefully.

My WinXP PC usually takes as long as 4 minutes to start up from cold
and in my case they this can't easily be improved.

I need quick access to the PC and Internet, so I leave the PC on all
day from 8am to 10pm. It gets used for about 20 minutes every couple
of hours but the pattern is not regular and there is a lot of
variability.

Starting up/powering down a hard drive is more strain than continuous
running, so would my hard drives be more likely to fail from:

(a) Repeated power up/power down, if I set XP to power down after 5
to 10 mins of non-use (is this a good value?)?

(b) Extended periods of continuous running, if I let the hard drives
run continuously through the day?

I gave up on powering down hard drives with the exception of notebooks
and only there while on battery power. I'm certain that the power
consumption of all my drives spinning constantly (8 as I write this)
will be deducted from my karma balance but the inconvenience of waiting
for spinup is sometimes just too much. In my case it may even be worse
since my always-on machines are running a distributed processing project
so that they are consuming more than idle-level power all the time.

But I've not noted any drive failures from having them spinning all the
time. There is certainly one drive in the mix, a 10kRPM IBM SCSI, which
has been running for at least 8 years now with no complaints or
glitches. In fact, in the past ten years I've had precisely one failure
and that was with an almost-new drive and one near failure from a very
elderly drive which started making an annoying whining noise but seemed
to keep working perfectly until it was packed up and replaced with a
larger one.

 

[GT]

Is it better to get XP to power down my hard drives after, say, 5 or
10 minutes of non-use or should I leave the drives running all day
long?

------

The details are as follows. I use my PC at home in a small office
and I want to minimize the chance of hard drive failure by treating
my hard drives carefully.

My WinXP PC usually takes as long as 4 minutes to start up from cold
and in my case they this can't easily be improved.

I need quick access to the PC and Internet, so I leave the PC on all
day from 8am to 10pm. It gets used for about 20 minutes every couple
of hours but the pattern is not regular and there is a lot of
variability.

Starting up/powering down a hard drive is more strain than continuous
running, so would my hard drives be more likely to fail from:

(a) Repeated power up/power down, if I set XP to power down after 5
to 10 mins of non-use (is this a good value?)?

(b) Extended periods of continuous running, if I let the hard drives
run continuously through the day?

You are addressing the symptoms, not the problem. As you say, spinning up
(turning on) is the most stressful thing for a hard drive. Why does boot
take 4 mintues for an internet browsing PC - what is it doing? I would be
very surprised if this could not be improved or easily halved!

 

[Paul]

Is it better to get XP to power down my hard drives after, say, 5 or
10 minutes of non-use or should I leave the drives running all day
long?

------

The details are as follows. I use my PC at home in a small office
and I want to minimize the chance of hard drive failure by treating
my hard drives carefully.

My WinXP PC usually takes as long as 4 minutes to start up from cold
and in my case they this can't easily be improved.

I need quick access to the PC and Internet, so I leave the PC on all
day from 8am to 10pm. It gets used for about 20 minutes every couple
of hours but the pattern is not regular and there is a lot of
variability.

Starting up/powering down a hard drive is more strain than continuous
running, so would my hard drives be more likely to fail from:

(a) Repeated power up/power down, if I set XP to power down after 5
to 10 mins of non-use (is this a good value?)?

(b) Extended periods of continuous running, if I let the hard drives
run continuously through the day?

If you check the specs, hard drives have a "boiler plate spec" of
50,000 start-stop cycles. Do the math, and see how long your proposed
policy, would last with respect to the start-stop cycle spec.

Placing the computer in "Standby, suspend to RAM", allows quick recovery
from the sleeping state. On my Win2K system, I'm running again in
about 10-15 seconds or so, from a return from standby. I use Standby all the
time, even when done with the computer at the end of the day. In S3
Standby, the disk stops spinning, the monitor and CPU are off, all PCI/AGP
cards are powered off. The only thing still powered, is the sticks of
RAM (and the LAN interface, in case you want to Wake On LAN). The RAM
holds the current system state, and is why it can recover so quickly.
There are two things to delay the recovery - the disk still has to
spin up (that takes 10 seconds), and the drivers have to reload the
registers on the hardware devices (should be pretty quick).

To know more about what is possible with your current system, go to
Device Manager. Click the (+) next to the word "Computer". Mine
says "ACPI Multiprocessor PC". The ACPI implies that Advanced Configuration
and Power Interface, was installed when the OS was installed. S3 is the
state in ACPI, that is used for Standby Suspend to RAM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acpi

The dumppo.exe program from Microsoft, can be used to check to see what
states are currently supported by your system. This runs from the DOS
prompt in Windows. This is a tiny download, only 12KB or so.

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Products/Oemtest/v1.1/WOSTest/Tools/Acpi/dumppo.exe

cap power capabilities
ps Win32 System power status
bs battery status
admin Admin policy overrides
ac AC power policy
dc DC power policy

This is part of "dumppo ps cap" from my Win2K machine. This is the line
in the output from dumppo.exe, that tells me S3 is supported.

System states supported.: S1 S3 S4 S5

Paul

 

[kony]

Is it better to get XP to power down my hard drives after, say, 5 or
10 minutes of non-use or should I leave the drives running all day
long?

------

The details are as follows. I use my PC at home in a small office
and I want to minimize the chance of hard drive failure by treating
my hard drives carefully.

My WinXP PC usually takes as long as 4 minutes to start up from cold
and in my case they this can't easily be improved.

I need quick access to the PC and Internet, so I leave the PC on all
day from 8am to 10pm. It gets used for about 20 minutes every couple
of hours but the pattern is not regular and there is a lot of
variability.

Starting up/powering down a hard drive is more strain than continuous
running, so would my hard drives be more likely to fail from:

(a) Repeated power up/power down, if I set XP to power down after 5
to 10 mins of non-use (is this a good value?)?

(b) Extended periods of continuous running, if I let the hard drives
run continuously through the day?

Extreme overheating, bad power, bad design, random
manufacturing defects and user error (dropping drive,
plugging in an ill-fitting power connector which stresses
the PCB, etc) are the more significant causes of drive
failure.

Given your variable access pattern and long boot time, I
suggest either powering down the drive after 20 minutes or
so of inactivity, or leaving it spinning. Either way other
factors will determine if the drive fails prematurely. As
for whether it will ever fail, of course it will if only you
use it for long enough so after a few years, say 3-4, it
ought to be replaced, and of course making regular backups
is the final solution as well as having a spare,
unused/unpowered drive on hand so that if the system goes
down you have an immediate way to restore function,
restoring from your backup data to it.

 

[Rod Speed]

Is it better to get XP to power down my hard drives after, say, 5 or
10 minutes of non-use or should I leave the drives running all day long?

There isnt much in it, and the default is to leave them on all day long
now, whereas it used to be to power them down after some time.

------

The details are as follows. I use my PC at home in a small office
and I want to minimize the chance of hard drive failure by treating
my hard drives carefully.

My WinXP PC usually takes as long as 4 minutes to start up
from cold and in my case they this can't easily be improved.

You sure hibernate wont work ?

I need quick access to the PC and Internet, so
I leave the PC on all day from 8am to 10pm.

I leave mine on 24/7 and only turn them off when I'm going to be away for a week or more.

It gets used for about 20 minutes every couple of hours
but the pattern is not regular and there is a lot of variability.

Starting up/powering down a hard drive is more strain than continuous
running, so would my hard drives be more likely to fail from:

(a) Repeated power up/power down, if I set XP to power
down after 5 to 10 mins of non-use (is this a good value?)?

The short story is that drives hardly ever fail due to that.

(b) Extended periods of continuous running, if I let
the hard drives run continuously through the day?

Thats generally easier on the drives but its important to ensure
that they dont get too hot on the hottest days in summer.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Is it better to get XP to power down my hard drives after, say, 5 or
10 minutes of non-use or should I leave the drives running all day
long?

Depends. A typical 3.5" HDD is only rated for about 50.000 start-stop
cycles. 2.5" drives are rated for about 500.000 start-stop cycles
because notebook computers do this frequently to save power.

Actually at least powering it doen some time is better, because
you will find problems earlier (two styates the problem can be
found in, instead of one). Of course you need to do drive
monitoring in addition. A full SMART selftes every 14 days or so
(can be scripted, e.g., with the smartmontools) and SMART
attribute monitoring will hepl you catch something like 2/3 of
all failures before you loose data or the drive.

The second approach is to minimize impact of HDD failure.
One steop is using RAID1. An othert is regular back-ups.
These are not replacements for each other. RQAID1 means you
can recover from most disk failures without using the backup
and in minimal time. Backup is for software problems and
problems that affect the whole RAID array, e.g. fire, water,
theft.

Arno

------

The details are as follows. I use my PC at home in a small office
and I want to minimize the chance of hard drive failure by treating
my hard drives carefully.

My WinXP PC usually takes as long as 4 minutes to start up from cold
and in my case they this can't easily be improved.

I need quick access to the PC and Internet, so I leave the PC on all
day from 8am to 10pm. It gets used for about 20 minutes every couple
of hours but the pattern is not regular and there is a lot of
variability.

Starting up/powering down a hard drive is more strain than continuous
running, so would my hard drives be more likely to fail from:

 

[Joe S.]

If you check the specs, hard drives have a "boiler plate spec" of
50,000 start-stop cycles. Do the math, and see how long your
proposed policy, would last with respect to the start-stop cycle
spec.

Placing the computer in "Standby, suspend to RAM", allows quick
recovery from the sleeping state. On my Win2K system, I'm running
again in about 10-15 seconds or so, from a return from standby. I
use Standby all the time, even when done with the computer at the
end of the day. In S3 Standby, the disk stops spinning, the monitor
and CPU are off, all PCI/AGP cards are powered off. The only thing
still powered, is the sticks of RAM (and the LAN interface, in case
you want to Wake On LAN). The RAM holds the current system state,
and is why it can recover so quickly. There are two things to delay
the recovery - the disk still has to spin up (that takes 10
seconds), and the drivers have to reload the registers on the
hardware devices (should be pretty quick).

To know more about what is possible with your current system, go to
Device Manager. Click the (+) next to the word "Computer". Mine
says "ACPI Multiprocessor PC". The ACPI implies that Advanced
Configuration and Power Interface, was installed when the OS was
installed. S3 is the state in ACPI, that is used for Standby
Suspend to RAM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acpi

The dumppo.exe program from Microsoft, can be used to check to see
what states are currently supported by your system. This runs from
the DOS prompt in Windows. This is a tiny download, only 12KB or
so.

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Products/Oemtest/v1.1/WOSTest/Tools/
Acpi/dumppo.exe

cap power capabilities
ps Win32 System power status
bs battery status
admin Admin policy overrides
ac AC power policy
dc DC power policy

This is part of "dumppo ps cap" from my Win2K machine. This is the
line in the output from dumppo.exe, that tells me S3 is supported.

System states supported.: S1 S3 S4 S5

Paul

Paul, Device Manager shows I have ACPI but DUMPPO says there's no S3:
System states supported.: S1 S4 S5

Which of these system states is a good one for me?

ANd how do I select one "system state" over another in XP?

 

[Paul]

Paul, Device Manager shows I have ACPI but DUMPPO says there's no S3:
System states supported.: S1 S4 S5

Which of these system states is a good one for me?

ANd how do I select one "system state" over another in XP?

First, check your BIOS settings. It could be that there is a setting
in there, that will help S3 work. S3 is the one you want for Suspend
To RAM. Look for ACPI in the motherboard manual, in the BIOS section,
and there is probably something controlling S1/S3. You'd want something
that enables S3.

Once the BIOS is set correctly, boot back into Windows, and use
the dumppo "administrative override".

If you search on "dumppo admin", including the double quotes, you
can find advice like this thread.

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1825058

Paul