[DUG] [Off topic] hard disk

[Alister Christie]

I think performance wise looking at ESATA would be the preferred 
solution, although I'm not an expert here.  If you are not using the 
drive regularly then putting it in an external enclosure that you can 
turn off would certainly be a greener and would save you some power, but 
lets check this

I think power costs around $0.20/kWH and modern HDDs use about 8W when 
idling.  If your computer is on 8 hours a day every day then
8 hours * 8 watts * 365 days * 0.2 cost per kilo-watt hour / 1000 = 
$4.67 saving in power per year.

An external enclosure will cost at least $50.

I think also the environmental impact of the production of the enclosure 
would be more significant then the generation of the power.

So putting it into an external enclosure is likely to be neither a cost 
saving nor greener, although it might be quieter with the HDD off.

If you are turning it on and off regularly this may reduce its lifespan 
(repeated heating and cooling), so this maybe a consideration.  But 
presumably the bearings will last longer if the drive isn't spinning 
constantly (although I could be wrong here)

Alister Christie
Computers for People
Ph: 04 471 1849 Fax: 04 471 1266
http://www.salespartner.co.nz
PO Box 13085
Johnsonville
Wellington 



Kyley Harris wrote:
> I think it will depend more on your useage than its internal or 
> external location.. If it overheats in the internal, then its life is 
> going to be short, but if you leave it in an external box, sitting on 
> a sunny desk, (or knock it off the desk by accident :-p) then its life 
> is also going to be less than good.
>
> I've got plenty of external drives which are all lasting very well.. 
> biggest hassle is just the slower access compared to an internal..
>
> I normally get about 10mb per second on usb/2 drives as a maximum.. so 
> its like running a LAN drive. The only fast one I've seen is when my 
> brother put 2 500gb drives into a pleiades firewire 800 enclosure on 
> his mac. he was getting 50mb/s copy times.
>
> On Jan 15, 2008 9:15 AM, Neven MacEwan <neven at mwk.co.nz 
> <mailto:neven at mwk.co.nz>> wrote:
>
>     Leigh
>
>     What sort of HD, SATA? Some are rated better than others MTBF
>     > Hello everyone,
>     >
>     > I have a hard disk which I don't access often. I want to know if
>     I put the
>     > hard disk in a external hard drive case compare to leave the
>     hard drive in
>     > the pc. Which method will help the hard drive to live longer if not
>     > considering more easy to damage the hard drive in the case?
>     >
>     > TIA
>     >
>     > Regards
>     > Leigh
>     >
>     >
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> -- 
> Kyley Harris
> Harris Software
> +64-21-671-821
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