Best practice for Zips and harddrive life span

Overread

Overread

Overread

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I'm looking to try and reduce the wear/tear on an HDD in my computer which I use to store 7Zip files on.

I'm wondering if its better to copy the zip off the HHD and paste it into a different drive and then unzip it; or if its better to unzip the file in place and simply target a different drive as the destination.

Or if if would make no difference at all.




I know in some ways its a lottery with HDD lifespan, but if there one approach that generates less use on the drive and thus less wear and tear, I'd be interested to know.
 
Never heard of the amount/type of file operations effecting HDD life span, that's not to say it doesn't. Just when compared to other potential failure mechanisms i suspect the amount/type of file operations is pretty low down the pecking order.

The main thing that kills/damages HDD are physical shocks and vibrations, especially if they happen when the drive is running, and high temperatures causing degradation inside the ICs on the controller board and drying out of the lubricants used on the motor/actuator arm.
 
I'd be surprised if either makes any difference. Both actions require a write to the drive, or a read from the drive to copy it elsewhere, so I don't think you're actually solving anything.
 
As far as I know, 7zip always extracts to your temp folder (usually on drive C: somewhere) and then moves the extracted files to the destination, so it doesn't make any difference where the file is.
 
Overread said:
I'm looking to try and reduce the wear/tear on an HDD in my computer which I use to store 7Zip files on.

I'm wondering if its better to copy the zip off the HHD and paste it into a different drive and then unzip it; or if its better to unzip the file in place and simply target a different drive as the destination.

Or if if would make no difference at all.




I know in some ways its a lottery with HDD lifespan, but if there one approach that generates less use on the drive and thus less wear and tear, I'd be interested to know.
Click to expand...
first of all, how much data is there your storing?
 
Thanks guys - good to know that I was concerned over nothing.

Cyber-Mav said:
first of all, how much data is there your storing?
Click to expand...
About 3.5TB on a 4TB HDD. The actual zips themselves range from a few hundred mb up to around 1GB at most more or less (might be one or two bigger but not often).
 
Honestly, you've nothing to worry about. I have an SSD and hard drive in my system - the SSD holds my programs and OS and the hard drive holds infrequently accessed files such as documents, pictures, music, archives. I do also use the hard drive for torrents, as I want to minimise the wear on my SSD and I know the hard drive can handle these.

I generally keep my system powered on 24/7 and never let the hard drives spin down. With the energy prices the way they are right now, some people might not want their systems powered on 24/7 - in which case I'd advise setting the hard drive spin down timer to never, so the at least the hard drive doesn't spin down unnecessarily when you're using the computer.

Of course your mileage may vary, but my Toshiba drives generally last for over 5 years this way, with one drive having around 7 years spin up time on it's clock.
 
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Overread said:
About 3.5TB on a 4TB HDD. The actual zips themselves range from a few hundred mb up to around 1GB at most more or less (might be one or two bigger but not often).
Click to expand...

I'd be more concerned about writes if you were using a SSD, HDDs don't have a (warranty) rating like SSDs do and my understanding is that the likely source of failure for an HDD is not the platter. I'd think if the drive is just handling large files infrequently, it's actually better for the internals than e.g. being a boot/Windows drive, where it's constantly making lots of small movements.
 
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