NASLite Network Attached Storage

I am wondering if there is a spindown or idle time for the hard disks incorporated into the NASLite software packages (I am making use of SMB) as it would seem rather costly to have to replace drives when they are always spinning full bore and obviously chopping life span.

Bump...

NASLite itself does not have any facilities for Hard Disk power management, however most likely your computer BIOS does. You can set your computer BIOS to control disk spindown as you deem necessary.

Another thing that should be noted is that it is a MISCONSEPTION that spinning the drive down will prolong life. That would be true if you use the drive only a small fraction of the time, but if your drive is spinning up and down every hour or so, that will most definitely shorten drive life.

As a general rule, spindown is good to reduce power consumption but does place unnecessary stress on the drive. On the other hand, if you wish to prolong drive life, make sure that you have a good power supply (no power fluctuations or brownouts) and the drive is properly cooled. Heat and inadequate power will reduce drive life.

Thank you for clearing that up for me, I have idletime configured in the bios now so that should help me out until I get the files taken off and/or moved.

Ah!

An oversight on my part - NASLite hits the drives every 5 minutes to check SMART status, so some drives will probably never spin down or spun up every 5 minutes.

I wouldnt want to spin them down for maximum longeveity.

I have run computers since the 80's and always run them 24/7. I think i have only lost a network card. Mechanical parts a few fans been replaced.

When does a light bulb blow ? When you switch it on.

Whilst working a a pc engineer for a small IT company I installed lots of new hard drives in machines, The shortest life of one of the drives was about 1 hour, installed windows xp etc and then clunk clunk. This was a brand new Maxtor Drive. Also i pulled many old drives from machines that was on 24/7 and they worked fine and no bad sectors. these being 4GB HD's

I'd say always have a back up of all important data, one way to look at it is imagine for one minute your main data drive failed right now and all data was gone! could you replace it?

The drive will fail at some point, to prolong life i would handle the drive carefully avoid knocking it when placing in caddies or cages. mount drives with spacing in between them to allow air to circulate. if u have to use caddies use metal ones these are better conductors of heat then plastic ones. use decent fans to pull air though the case.