Wear and tear on 'green' drives

Neolink

Neolink

Neolink

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I picked up a Samsung F2 EcoGreen drive a few weeks ago and I noticed it turns itself off very very often, so throughout the day it maybe starts and stops 10 - 20 times, compared to my other drives which are always turned on. :o

Do you think these drives will die sooner than a non-green drive? As far as I know the mechanical wear and tear caused by starting and stopping is much higher than when something is left on constantly.
 
Interesting, first thoughts would be yes (It's not so much the mechanics, it's the high startup current that's the problem and it's just on spin up.)
Not sure if they spin up slower to compensate?
Is this your main drive or a 2nd/3rd, windows decided my 3rd drive should turn off a lot so I told it not to :)
 
Neolink said:
Do you think these drives will die sooner than a non-green drive? As far as I know the mechanical wear and tear caused by starting and stopping is much higher than when something is left on constantly.
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Possibly, but I would suspect materials science of the mechanical parts would have advanced enough to compensate. If in doubt check the MTBF of a green drive compared to it's equivalent non-green drive.
 
MTBF isnt a very usefull stat, For example, if Western Digital run 60,000 test drives for 1 hour each, and none fail they can say MTBF 60,000 hours, test more drives (or for a longer period) and the MTFB stat is increased.

Well lets say the test 60,000 disks for 1 week to calculate their stats... that shows absolutely nothing about how many of their disks will still be working in 12 months time. Simply that a very low number of disks will be dead on arrival, or fail withing the first week.

MTBF is such a pointless statistic it shouldnt even be quoted these days. All you need to care about is what warrenty the manufactuer offers if it fails... and have a backup of any important data for if/when the drive does fail.
 
Corasik said:
MTBF isnt a very usefull stat, For example, if Western Digital run 60,000 test drives for 1 hour each, and none fail they can say MTBF 60,000 hours, test more drives (or for a longer period) and the MTFB stat is increased.

Well lets say the test 60,000 disks for 1 week to calculate their stats... that shows absolutely nothing about how many of their disks will still be working in 12 months time. Simply that a very low number of disks will be dead on arrival, or fail withing the first week.

MTBF is such a pointless statistic it shouldnt even be quoted these days. All you need to care about is what warrenty the manufactuer offers if it fails... and have a backup of any important data for if/when the drive does fail.
Click to expand...

The average time of 60,000 drives run for 1 hour is 1 hour not 60,000.
 
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