Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!uhccux!munnari.oz.au!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!ditmela!diemen!tasis!ben From: ben@tasis.utas.oz.au@munnari.oz (Ben Lian) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Leaving Hard-drives on Message-ID: <969@diemen.cc.utas.oz> Date: 25 Jul 89 00:02:38 GMT References: Sender: root@diemen.cc.utas.oz Organization: Elec Eng & Comp Sci, Uni of Tasmania, Australia Lines: 45 In article tantuico@andromeda (Samuel B Tantuico) writes: > >My friend says that it's better to leave a hard-drive on because >it will cause less wear and tear. Okay, but he's got an IBM-PC. >Does the same hold true for a Macintosh?... internal and external? This hoary old chestnut again! I doubt that there was general consensus on what the better policy is the last time this was raised on the net. Rodime 140 Plus (and 1400RX HD assembly) users will have probably discovered that their drives like to be left ON. When my drive cools down, it has problems spinning up to speed when next switched on. Sometimes I have to turn the drive on and off several times (I counted 15 once!) before it spins up and unlocks the heads. (Once upon a time half the problem was with the old Mac Plus ROMS, but that has been fixed now. Thanks Apple Oz!) Once the drive is nice and warm, there is no problem---it will restart reliably every every time after being powered down. Obviously, the drive spindle is siezing up when cold. I have heard of drives that sieze up so badly that they won't even start spinning. In any case, I gather that having to kick start a drive like that can cause more spindle wear than leaving it on. What's more,the motor is going to get stressed more as it tries to get the reluctant platters going. Furthermore, I'm told that frequent warmup/cool down cycles don't do much good for electronic components. Then again, I'm not an EE so I'm probably talking through my hat.... -- bl ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin Y H Lian ACSnet: ben@tasis.utas.oz Dept. of EE & CS ARPA : ben%tasis.utas.oz.au@uunet.uu.net University of Tasmania BITnet: munnari!tasis.utas.oz!ben@ GPO Box 252C uunet.uu.net Hobart, Tasmania 7001 UUCP : {enea,hplabs,mcvax,uunet,ukc}! A U S T R A L I A munnari!tasis.utas.oz!ben Tel: +61-02-202380 Fax: +61-02-202713 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Fortunately the computer virus did no harm to our records. It was immediately devoured by all the bugs in our programming." -- Cartoon, CW Australia and can stress the drive motor