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Should you leave a hard drive running when it's not in use? |
March 18, 2013
Mike Bell asked if he should shut down his hard drive when he doesn't need it. "Will that constant powering up [and down] add wear and tear…?"
From what I can tell, regularly turning a hard drive on and off can wear it down. But so can running it around the clock. For that matter, you can kill a drive by leaving it off and untouched for too long (I've actually done that).
In other words, these things are fragile, and there's little agreement on how best to treat them. I checked with two experts on hard drive technology, and got two very different answers to the leave on/turn off controversy.
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2030997/should-you-leave-a-hard-drive-running-when-its-not-in-use-.html#tk.rss_howto
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