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Originally Posted by MpG The link to the actual Google report wasn't working for me, but if I'm not mistaken, one big red flag for them was having the drives repeatedly going from idle to full load. That, apparently, shortened the drive lifespan more than having the hard-drive running constantly, even at the higher end of temperatures. Probably something to do with lubrication issues. You let a car sit all winter and do nothing, you'll have a big repair bill by springtime too.  |
Well it's all relative - turning your HDD on and off will not kill it ! It's how you handle it and how often you do it - Hard Drives are made to handle power cycling, it is all taken into account in its rating - A non defective, healthy drive, should be able to handle on/off cycles - now if you are going to turn on and off your HDD 100 times every day that's one thing, but occasional on/off cycles won't hurt it - you will have upgraded long before it dies from the wear of on/off cycles anyways. I leave mine on 24/7 - keep in mind components have a lifespan, that goes for motherboards, videocards, etc, those capacitors too have a lifespan, power supplies have a lifespan, everything does - if you are not using your computer for long periods of time it is not a bad thing to shut it down, if you are using your computer everyday, then leave it on. It's big changes in temperature that can cause harm - so unless your room temp is -10C and your PC case is a heater, I would not worry much - I know people who cycle their systems on/off twice daily and have had no issues. When a component has defects from the start, this is where on/off cycle may cause it to fail earlier - that can be true with hard drives - but otherwise a healthy component should be fine. Yes the contraction and expansion caused by the heating and cooling of components is real - but you won't kill your components with turning it off once in a while :D