power saving hard drive

[cronus1914]

I have 2 hard drives in my system and in Windows XP Power Management I have it set that my 2nd hard drive shuts down after 20 mins of inactivity. I can often hear it power down and then power up again when I access it for the 1st time after the power down. My question is, will all this powering up or down stress the hard drive??

BiLL

[YODA74]

Good question most of this is due to the generally unpredictable power surges and stress on the drive motors at spinup. The drive goes from zero power to full in a split second. This can be rather stressing.The other thing is that spinning the platters up to the 3600/4800/whatever
RPM is the most work your drive's motor ever has to do. Once it is up to speed, it just coasts along with very little work. From there's it's just minute adjustments in the platters' rotational velocity.I would just recommend that you keep the drives well ventilated and cool for constant running since there is no cool down period for them. And( don't turn off your computer if you're going to turn it back on in half an hour. I don't use power mgt it's either on or it is off...

[cronus1914]

So your suggesting that I don't set the power managment to power down the hard drives at all??

BiLL

[Budfred]

I don't power down partly due to the concerns that Yoda mentioned and also because the system often seems to become unstable when it comes back...