do hard discs need 'rest'?

[opus1]

This might be a naive question, but I will be grateful for an answer.

Is it true,what some people say,that you can increase the life span of your hard disc by shutting down the computer if you are not using it for lengthy periods,minimising multi tasking,screen savers,defragmenting,and so on?

Thank you.

[liorean]

A hard drive like a cd-rom contains moving parts - and the motor that power the moving parts get gradually more and more "exhausted". Modern hard drives "relax" when they are not written, and modern power handling often allow the power to a hard drive to be shut down while in "sleep" or "inactive" mode.

That said, the constant motion of a "relaxing" hard drive isn't at all as "exhausting" for the the motor as frequent changes in activity are.
Of course, the most "exhausive" action is to force the motor to high activity and writing/reading on multiple places at the same time.


So, yes there are some benefits - but they usually aren't large enough for people to care about.

If you really want to try to spare your hard drive, use several same-type-same-size harddrives in a RAID array optimised for speed. It minimises the read/write needed on each single unit in the array.

[mouse]

If you're not doing anything, the disk isn't likely to be accessing much so you've no problem. The only thing you need worry about with hdd's is when it's reading or writing to the disk, the actual rotary aspect doesn't matter; modern disks use super low friction oil bearings, and an electric motor is happy at high rpm for long periods of time (current being inversely proportional to rpm). As liorean mentioned, actually accelerating is the most stressful thing a motor does so why have it start and stop?

Defrag your disk every two months or so, run scandisk at the same time. Backup important files and the registry if you wish. That's all you need do with hard disks. If you're leaving a machine on overnight, or for long periods of time, have the disk switch off in the power saving settings.

[opus1]

thank you both,for your replies.

appreciate it.