Is it damaging to turn off hard drives?

[hotfusion]

What is the least damaging to a hard drive in terms of wear-setting it to turn off after 5 minutes causing frequent re-starts,but not spinning for a large portion of the time...........or setting it to never turn off? Other people i've spoken to are divided on this.Does anyone actually know? Thanks.

 

[Alt255]

Hard drives are designed to run continuously. In my opinion, the Power Saving "features" of recent BIOSs and OSs are scams. Have you ever heard of a drive manufacturer recommending that you use Power Saving to prolong the life of a drive?

Somebody post here if you find one.

Alt255@Vorpalcom.Intranets.com
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[djfromla]

I agree with Alt255... It is similar to just cutting the power off while your hard drive is on... you might get a few bad sectors every now and then due to the constant powering up and down...

I also read somewhere where it is good just to forget that the energy saving tool is there... especially for desktops and servers... it was developed specifically for Lap Tops and nothing else...

 

[hotfusion]

Thanks,guys-that more or less answers that one! I suspected that might be the case-it can't be good for the heads to be landing every 5 minutes.Thanks for your views.