lost_soul on 16/7/2010 at 17:51

---

I installed a SATA 1 TB drive into an external enclosure, and it works great. If I don't write to the thing for about 5 minutes though, it spins down! Isn't this a *bad* thing? I heard that hard drives are only rated for so many spin ups/downs. Surely, waiting 20 or 30 minutes to spin down would be smarter.

This occurs in Linux. I'm not sure whether it will happen in Windows as well. The documentation for the enclosure mentions nothing about adjusting the spin-down time. If I connect the drive through ESATA instead of USB, it stays spun up, but you can't turn it off and back on again without completely shutting down the system.

I've got other external (pre-built) drives that do not perform in this manner. They stay spun up for at least 20 minutes.