Windows 10: Best power options to maximize HDD life?

[magellan]

If you want to maximize HDD life is it best to turn off the hard disks quickly or to wait for a long period of time? I'm referring particularly to the setting of:
Power options --> advanced options --> hard disk --> turn off hard disk after

Or does it matter at all considering how often windows likes accessing HDD's?

 

[EarthDog]

I don't know if anyone has that answer... I don't recall seeing it tested anywhere. That said, I doubt it matters much at all in the first place. I've never touched that value as there wasn't a need to (no drives died 'prematurely'), and don't plan on it.

 

[RollingThunder]

If you want to maximize HDD life is it best to turn off the hard disks quickly or to wait for a long period of time? I'm referring particularly to the setting of:
Power options --> advanced options --> hard disk --> turn off hard disk after

Or does it matter at all considering how often windows likes accessing HDD's?

I have been powering down HDD's for years after ~ 10 mins on both my XP and Vista64 machines but I'm a light user.

Crystal disk and WD Diags has been telling me my 14 year-old WD 75GB Raptor is failing for the last 14 years. One thing I never do is move the machine while its running. I'm no expert on this, maybe I'm just lucky but these same tactics should work on W10 HDD's too.

This drive had some bad sectors when new and I used the Gibson Research software to move and isolate them at the beginning. I'm guessing WD Diags and Crystal Disk sees this and assumes failure is immanent.

I imagine the point is moot with SSD drives.............

 

[Woomack]

It depends on the HDD. If it's a data center/enterprise series then it can be even recommended to keep it running or at least not to make it stop too often. If it's a home series, then brands like Seagate are not recommending them to run for more than 6-8h per day so have to stop every now and then. This is also why cheaper series have all these power-saving technologies.

I have some HDD running in NAS or at work 24/7 for 3-4 years and there are no problems but I'm mainly using WD (Red, Purple, Gold). I remember that cheaper Seagate HDD, designed for home/office use, used to die in 3-6 months of constant work.

 

[EarthDog]

But are any changes needed from any of the power plans? Don't they all power down disks after XX amount of time?

 

[RollingThunder]

But are any changes needed from any of the power plans? Don't they all power down disks after XX amount of time?

Ed,

I don't know that but these old XP and Vista machines have not been turned off for the last 9 years except for power-outs or cleaning maintenance but I make sure the drives lay dormant after ~ 10 mins. My WIN 10 machine is an SSD.

Actually this 75GB Raptor is a drive I bought from Krag in 2006.

 

[EarthDog]

In W10, all power plans (the three) each shut off spinners by default. Balanced and power savings is 10 mins, high-perf is 20 mins. I don't imagine W8 etc are different.

If Seagate recommends "6-8 hours a day" for consumer drives, that's exponentially longer than the default power down times which tells me we don't need to touch a thing.

 

[Woomack]

Yes, you are right, Windows shuts down HDD or even SSD on every power plan by default. If it was causing issues with drives then they would change it. For sure HDD manufacturers would push them to change it. Like they disabled defrag on SSD when SSD became popular.
I don't remember anyone changing power plans for HDD, in desktops or servers so I guess that nothing has to be changed.

Little offtopic...
My latest thought was that to save SSD life, can use a RAM disk I wasn't using it for longer and looks like newer versions are saving a "backup" on SSD/HDD and have some more options so can restart a PC without losing the data (at least won't lose the last saved state). I had no idea what to do with 64GB+ RAM and I started to play with RAM disk, running 45GB game and it works like that for 3 weeks now. It improved access time and FPS but not really a lot so it's not worth spending money on 64GB+ RAM only to set a RAM disk However, since the game runs from RAM then won't save data so often on the SSD. I guess that spare SSD would cost less than RAM

 

[EarthDog]

RAM disks were fun back in the day...though I haven't made one in several years at this point. Writes on any modern SSD/M.2 module are so high, it's not a worry for my use model so I don't sweat it these days (and even then it was for giggles). I got tired of loading in games first only to wait in lobbies longer.

I'd imagine level loads are noticeable faster, but wonder how you saw FPS improvements. I'd imagine that varies by title... large open worlds where there is a lot of loading and storage activity likely showing the most improvements? I wonder if it does anything for FPS type games where there is little storage use after the initial level load.

 

[wagex]

I hate listening to them spin up and down all the time, so I set them to always on. I have disks I just retired with over 8 years of runtime on them.

 

[magellan]

I remember reading a thread here about parking heads and how there was a limited number of times heads could be parked in HDD's before they failed because of it. That's what really prompted this question. Is it better for an HDD to be off for as long as possible or on for as long as possible?

My friend has a DVR video surveillance system in a closet (that has no A/C!) in his business that runs 24-7 and has been on for the last ten years and continuously writing data! When I run seagate disk utilities off the DVD-RW on the DVR it reports no problems with the seagate ST3500630AV EIDE HDD, not even one reallocated sector. It indicates on the label it's a special kind of HDD designed for DVR's and according to Seagate: "The SV 35 Series hard drives are engineered specifically for use in digital video surveillance systems." What makes these HDD's so tough and long lasting? Or is it just the fact they're left continuously running 24-7 that gives them such great longevity? Maybe I should be buying HDD's designed for DVR's!?

 

[Woomack]

I'd imagine level loads are noticeable faster, but wonder how you saw FPS improvements. I'd imagine that varies by title... large open worlds where there is a lot of loading and storage activity likely showing the most improvements? I wonder if it does anything for FPS type games where there is little storage use after the initial level load.

On PC, I play almost only Black Desert Online. The difference was in load times between some screens (like the first loading screen) and when changing servers/characters but it doesn't matter if I wait for 3 seconds more when I start the game. I was testing it on a laptop and then I could see about 3-4 FPS more but I guess it's related to lower latency while loading various things on the screen. Without a RAM disk, I had ~55-56FPS and with a RAM disk, I had about ~58-60FPS. On desktop PC, it's hard to notice as in the same places I have 120FPS+. But this is in a game that is loading a lot of small files.
It was more like a test out of curiosity but for most users, it won't improve anything, especially if there is already SSD in use.