Power Options: Turning Hard Disk Off?

Bubbleman

Theres the option in power options for windows to turn off your hard disks after a set time.

Is there any benefit from this and do you think my hard drive will be fine if I never let them turn off? (accept for shutting down)

I have a HDD cooling mount also, so my HD is pretty cool.

kryyst

Benefit is that it saves power. Downside is that it takes a little longer to wake up and if you are relying on gaining access to your computer remotely when it's shut down it can some times be a pain.

There is some field of thought that letting the computer stop the harddrive can be hard on it. But it really depends on how you have your shut down time set. It's also only going to stop it if it's idle. So if you are downloading things over night it won't go idle. It'll just idle if it's got no requests at all.

So with that in mind if you generally don't use your computer over night and want to save some hydro set your computer to shut down the hard drive after 1hr of idle.

Your-Amish-Daddy

I say if you're not using it, power it down outright. Saves even more off your power bill.

Bubbleman

Also some more questions on the same topic...

1. Will there be a significant increase in life of my hard drive? Does the life of a hard drive matter by how much its used?

2. System standby powers the disks off, will I still be able to continue downloads online while on system standby?

Because I would like so that my computer locks but still can download.

Your-Amish-Daddy

1: Negotiable. The spin up is the most demanding part of a hard drive's functions. It has to go from 0 to 7200.

2: Not if it's in standby.

Bubbleman

What power options do you do?

Right now I just leave it for 20 minutes to shut off my monitor, I usually have downloads going on all day then I power it off to sleep at night.

Your-Amish-Daddy

Well, that's probably the best you're gonna get.