Automatic Power-Off

WinNut · December 31, 2014

So, as many of my friends might now know, I have a laptop with an SSD and an HDD. The SSD is used to boot Windows 7 x64 and the HDD has an old, bootable copy of Windows 7 x64 which I will keep for emergency purposes, in addition to *soon to be* my media collection (photos & videos). Now, onto my question.

Is it okay to set it up to stop rotating the HDD after, say 5 minutes of inactivity? I'm not exactly sure if this will cause damage to the motor over the long term with the constant start-stop-start-stop-start-stop.

Thanks in advance.

CookieB · December 31, 2014

Don't worry, it will probably be the case anyway. My HDD (only storage) will stop frequently if not in use.

It will consume far less power en make a lot less noise!

It will add a little wear to the motor, but it is not that significant. And the advantages are far greater than the little extra wear.

Edit

I know there have been hefty discussions about this topic in the past. The HDD's bearings wear while running, start/stop cycles will wear the motor. One of those two will probably give at some point. But a modern HDD should be able to handle it's for it's life expectancy.

And of course your drive might be the unlucky one which dies a bit quicker due to it, but by the time that happens you really should have a back up of your data. (You probably should always have a back up )