Simple question really, should Hard Disks on a server be set to turn off after a period of inactivity? Within Server 2003 (and many other Microsoft Operating Systems) is the option to have the Hard Disks power down after a set amount of time. I used to run all servers I came across with never, but recently switched to 5 minutes, thinking that it would save power. However, after doing some Google searching, there appears to be a lot of mixed views on this. Many say that it decreases the life of a Hard Disks, whereas others say it saves power and prolongs the life. Vote and post your opinions, along with any useful links - I want evidence!
I'm afraid I can't give you any useful links, since there's too much controversy to really get anything worthwhile. However, I'd be glad to give you opinions. You get wear and tear on the drives both from spinning up, and from running constantly. However, as I understand it desktop drives are made to be run most of the time and it takes quite a bit of power to spin up such big platters. Incidentally, you might actually increase power consumption with a 5 minute spindown time, because spinning the disks up again every few minutes is more wear and much more power usage than letting them spin for the same amount of time. Perhaps if you set them to 30 minutes or so, you'd see a small benefit. Still, I leave my 3.5" drives spinning all the time. I have never set one to spin down, so I don't know how long they last in that situation, but past experience shows that leaving them running constantly still allows them to live well into obsolescence. Laptop drives are different, though. For one thing, they are tiny little buggers and aren't nearly as hard for the motors to spin up. That means less power used and less drive wear for each start. I leave 2.5" drives set to stop after 30 minutes on AC, 5 minutes on DC because I don't use them heavily and it seems likely to save power. Also, unlike a desktop or server where I might do things over the network that require a hard drive access, if my laptop drive is idle long enough to stop, chances are good I'm not using it and it won't be starting and stopping a bunch of times in short succession.
That seems to be the most logical answer. I've since disabled the power-down, leaving it as Never - mainly due to all the controversial articles floating around the Internet.
