[ale] SATA PCI card or external USB enclosures?

[Calvin Harrigan]

<snip>
> I know this was a reply to Calvin, but I'll throw in my $ .02 as well.
>
> If I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 (with Gnome) or Mint 13 (with Mate - fork of Gnome), I go into the power configuration settings and find all references to "spin drives down" and uncheck  those.  I haven't noticed any problems.  "Green" drives may decide to shut down on their own anyway.  When I'm backing up, I'm usually booted from a CD like Acronis and I'm beating the drive to death for 5 hours, so it doesn't shut down.  I detach the backup drive when not in use in case malware or an electrical problem happens, it doesn't affect the backup.  Flood, fire, or theft could affect it.
>
> For many years, I've thought the best thing to do was to leave the drives on all the time.  However, I just replaced 3 HDD's less than 3 years old.  It's possible that bearing failure or some other mechanical thing is making them wear out too soon.  I recently did a maintenance check on my Dad's machine.  He turns it on once or twice per month.  His drives are fine although they are of similar age.  I still think cycling power all the time is a problem, but it's hard to know where the balance point is.  For now, I'm still running most of my machines, and drives, all the time.  If does slow down access time, a bit, if the computer has to restart the drive.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
>
> --
>
I've been computing for decades and I've NEVER left any of machines on 
unless they were doing something.  I don't have any higher rates of 
failures than anyone else I know.  The most failures I've had is due to 
physical trauma.  I think the last hard drive I had died, actually 
started developing bad sectors was a MAXTOR 80GB 8 or so years ago. 
Other than that no other issues with drives or any other hardware for 
that matter.  I know it's anecdotal, but I thought I would mention it.
Observe as all my computers fail within a week for various reasons...  0_o