Spin Up, Spin Down

maxblack wrote:
IMHO frequent spin up/down cycles for hard drives is akin to frequent on/off switching of incandescent light bulbs. There's an inrush of current to start (in this case a motor) and especially if the motor is already hot, this can't possibly be good for it. My bias and I'm sticking to it! ;)

Data Center Raid Drives generally stay spun up, since they can't afford the spin-up lag. Since most drive reliability data comes from studying data centers, there isn't hard data.

My own "bias" is a bit more complex. I agree that spinning up a motor stresses the bearings. Keeping the motor spinning also wears the bearings (although not nearly so much). So I think there is a balance point (where leaving the drive spun down for X hours creates less wear than the subsequent spin up). But I have no idea what X is.

Since there isn't much real data, we can stick with our biases without much challenge. :)