Should you keep HDD running

[arsenalbates]

My rig is set up with 1 ssd running OS and 3 other 1TB drives.

Now I have set the drives to never spin down as I have read this should be the case if you have an SSD.

However is this going to cause a problem in the long run and will it shorten the hard drives lives being on all the time the machine is running ?

On the other hand i also hear that them spinning up and down constantly can do just as much damage.

Whats best here ?

 

[larss]

Hello,
If you have no cost constraints, keep'em spinning You can save energy by letting the disks spin down. If they are 7200rpm disks they will use 6-9W when idling, or 0.5W when spinned down. Green drives running at ~5400rpm do not need to be spinned down; they will idle at 3.5W which is quite low already.
It also depends on other factors, like how often will those HDDs be accessed. The sequential speeds are more dependent on data density than on spindle speed, and random IOps. I'm guessing you are using the SSD for system and HDDs for lage files thus sequential performance is the only relevant stat here.
You might want to think about spinning down after a few hours of inactivity.

 

[arsenalbates]

thanks for your lengthy reply, Cost isnt so much of an issue, they are all Samsung F3's so i read that the power consumption on idle is about 5W.

My main concern is weather the constant start/stops will cause more damage than keeping them spinning all the time. One drive is only a backup drive that is accessed once a week so thats best powered down but the other two are used fairly regurly (one for a recoding drive for ip cam and the other for downloads)