Hard drive always on??

[Omicron Persei 8]

Hello I have windows vista ultimate x 64 installed on a new build. The
hard drive is always running even with indexing off and nothing at all
running... any idea what is causing this issue and how to correct it?

Thanks in advance

 

[John Doe]

Hello I have windows vista ultimate x 64 installed on a new build.
The hard drive is always running even with indexing off and nothing
at all running... any idea what is causing this issue and how to
correct it?

As Windows evolved, hard drive usage became more vigorous. Used to be,
the hard drive wasn't accessed unless you were doing something at your
desk. At first, I had a difficult time with the idea of Windows
messing with/up the hard drive when I wasn't there. Seems to me that
my installation of Windows XP is usually accessing the hard drive.

You can use Performance Monitor. I monitor hard drive activity and
other indicators like CPU activity, available RAM, and Internet bytes
sent/received. It's one good use for a secondary monitor IMO.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[Pipboy]

Hello I have windows vista ultimate x 64 installed on a new build. The
hard drive is always running even with indexing off and nothing at all
running... any idea what is causing this issue and how to correct it?

Thanks in advance

How long have you been running Vista? Why did you turn off indexing? The
HDD is probably active because Superfetch is tuning things up. It will be
that for a week or so and then settle down.

 

[Frank McCoy]

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Omicron Persei 8

Hello I have windows vista ultimate x 64 installed on a new build. The
hard drive is always running even with indexing off and nothing at all
running... any idea what is causing this issue and how to correct it?

Unless you specifically turn them off, hard drives *will* always be
running. It's *NOT* a mistake. Like fluorescent light-bulbs, the
lifetime of most disk-drives can more be measured in how many times
they're started and stopped than by how many hours they run.

Every time a disk shuts down and powers off, the heads, which should be
flying micro-inches above the surface, "land" and scrape off measurable
amounts of surface from each platter. Oh, they're "lubricated" to
supposedly prevent such damage; but even then the lubricant heats up
under the stress and builds up on the heads; thus making then not fly as
nicely as they're designed to.

The best way to keep your disk-drives running is to keep them running
forever. Considering the price and environmental costs to produce new
disk-drives, it's even less expensive to do so than turning them off.

About the only place turning off disk-drives makes sense is on laptops
when running under battery power.

Still, if you decide you *must* turn off your drives, and are using
Windows:

Right-click on the desktop.
Select "Properties"
Select the "Screen Saver" tab.
Click on the "Power" button down near the bottom.
Then choose the various options to turn various items off when idle;
including disk-drives.

But I really really *really* don't recommend it.
I used to work for Seagate in the Product Assurance Department where we
tested drives to destruction if we could, to find out if they met
specifications before entering production. I was the guy who wrote the
software to test the drives with.

If you want a drive to last a long time: *!!!LEAVE IT ON!!!!*

Posted and Mailed.

 

[Trimble]

Thanks Frank for expert info.
BUT is standard Hard Drive sat in an always on PC necessarily 'On' ??
just by the fact of it having power supply on ??
The system drive in XP or VISTA is kept busy but what about a secondary
drive
hardly ever accessed ?
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") mouse

 

[Frank McCoy]

Thanks Frank for expert info.
BUT is standard Hard Drive sat in an always on PC necessarily 'On' ??
just by the fact of it having power supply on ??

Unless a specific command to unload is sent.
Most drives, AFAIK, have such commands; though they're rarely used.
My hard drives just sit there spinning, even with no access for months.
This not only helps them keep running; but makes them accessible when
needed. It can take up to a minute or longer to bring a drive up from
idle where it's not spinning ... Something you really don't want to do
on most systems.

The system drive in XP or VISTA is kept busy but what about a secondary
drive hardly ever accessed ?

See above.

 

[Trimble]

Thanks for your answer.
But common sense (for what that's worth would assume the system disc
with frequent
head / access activity will have greater wear & shorter life than a 2nd ary
Disc
holding only some times accessed data.
But I note my various HD's in my home comp all seem to feel warm to the
touch
regardless of weather they are being accessed.
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") Mouse

 

[Frank McCoy]

Thanks for your answer.
But common sense (for what that's worth would assume the system disc
with frequent head / access activity will have greater wear & shorter
life than a 2nd ary Disc holding only some times accessed data.

Actually, "common sense" is completely *wrong* in this regard.

As I recall, from actual testing, the drives constantly random-accessed
to-death lasted *longer* than those just spinning on one track; and
those drives lasted *far* longer than those spun up and down on a
regular basis. The extra wear on the bearings of the arm being almost
unnoticeable compared to the problems of head-disk interface wearing on
the surface. Actual reading and writing or head-switching being all
electronic; and having no effect at all on lifetime.

But I note my various HD's in my home comp all seem to feel warm to the
touch regardless of weather they are being accessed.

Of course. The main heat of a drive is caused by the spinning disk,
*not* the access. With today's faster spinning drives, that means more
heat. Oh, *some* percentage of heat is added when seeking; as the
energy to move the actuator at a reasonable speed has to go *somewhere*.
So, to keep the heat down (and thus the lifetime longer) what you
*really* need is something that moves the actuator around on the drive
at a reasonably slow rate.

Of course, drive manufacturers *know* this; and most drives these days
have logic that watches how long it has been since the drive was last
accessed through the interface; and when it gets more than so long
(about ten minutes is my guess) they start moving the head/arm around on
the drive to keep it from wearing a hole in the lubrication on one track
.... That being the main problem these days with letting a head sit in
one spot for too long. Eventually the pressure forces the oil (or
equivalent) to spread out to adjacent tracks ... Thus making a ripple in
the surface and creating other problems as well.

The things most people know about disk-drives that just ain't so ....
Like shutting them off to increase their life-span. ;-{

Well ... It's just "common sense", isn't it?
Only, like I said, "common sense" doesn't know squat about modern
disk-drives. Ask the guys (like me) who test them to death, *trying* to
break them before a customer ever sees one. (Well ... OK ... I *used*
to be in that business.)

As I recall, about 90% or more of problems encountered that lead to
drives crashing or dying in one manner or another, were all head/disk
interface related. Less that 10% being electronics failure or bearings
or motor problems; with an almost insignificant number being weird
stuff. We did this running *thousands* of drives in racks, running a
bazzilion different access modes and patterns to see how we could make
them fail "life tests". That's not mentioning the thousands we ran
through voltage-margin tests, pressure and lack-of-pressure tests,
power-fail tests, disconnect-tests, heat and cold tests, shock tests,
and more tests you normally wouldn't imagine. The idea being that if we
could get a drive to fail, then for sure *some* customer out there would
also get the drive to crap out ... and complain bitterly when it did so.

 

[geoff]

I had a seagate cheetah, 10,000 rpm, that was always hot, meaning one could
not keep their finger pressed on it and it lasted 10 years. It did get way
too noisy, so, I pulled it. The drive was used for the OS and I never
turned the disk off.

-g

 

[Frank McCoy]

I had a seagate cheetah, 10,000 rpm, that was always hot, meaning one could
not keep their finger pressed on it and it lasted 10 years. It did get way
too noisy, so, I pulled it. The drive was used for the OS and I never
turned the disk off.

Yep. 10K RPM is enough to make any drive screeching hot.
Usually such high speeds are reserved for smaller drives.

 

[kony]

Thanks for your answer.
But common sense (for what that's worth would assume the system disc
with frequent
head / access activity will have greater wear & shorter life than a 2nd ary
Disc
holding only some times accessed data.

Yes that's true, is what common sense would dictate but then
there's the issue of whether that wear was significant
enough to cause a failure or negligable.

The real answer is don't try to run your drives until they
are very old. Replace them by the 3rd or 4th year and they
should only fail before then if they had some defect that
was going to kill them anyway (unless never allowed to spin
at all, just sitting on a shelf).

But I note my various HD's in my home comp all seem to feel warm to the
touch
regardless of weather they are being accessed.

Warm is no problem, it's when they are very hot that it
could matter. They are expected to produce some heat and
obviously can deal with it or else their cases would be made
with a finned design to dissipate more heat, when placed in
a properly cooled system (& drive rack). It is ultimately
up to the system designer/builder to ensure the environment
they see is within what they are engineered to tolerate.

 

[Frank McCoy]

Yes that's true, is what common sense would dictate but then
there's the issue of whether that wear was significant
enough to cause a failure or negligable.

The real answer is don't try to run your drives until they
are very old. Replace them by the 3rd or 4th year and they
should only fail before then if they had some defect that
was going to kill them anyway (unless never allowed to spin
at all, just sitting on a shelf).

Sadly, true.
While "life tests" with actual disk-drives gave MTBFs of hundreds of
thousands of hours, sometimes even millions, once the "infant mortality"
rates passed, those MTBF figures were calculated by running thousands of
drives for a year or two, dividing the total hours run by the number of
drives in the test; not actually running drives for the ten or more
years needed for even 100,000 hours, when almost all of them would have
experienced end-of-life problems in the "bathtub curve".

This was/is necessary; as there just isn't enough *time* to do that and
still put out a product before it's obsolete. Even with the life tests
they *do* run, the product is already on the market before the test
itself is 1/4 complete. ;-{

 

[Ken]

The real answer is don't try to run your drives until they
are very old. Replace them by the 3rd or 4th year and they
should only fail before then if they had some defect that
was going to kill them anyway (unless never allowed to spin
at all, just sitting on a shelf).

http://216.239.37.132/papers/disk_failures.pdf