Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube
The key with externals is to turn them off whenever possible. A regular harddrive inside your computer will usually spin down and power down automatically when your computer's ACPI power management kicks in. In most externals, the drive stays on the whole time which is incredibly damaging, not to mention how hot they get. The only way to prolong drive life (nomatter how long that might be) is not to use them.
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Not correct, sorry. The drive staying on the whole time is not incredibly damaging, and drives are designed to run warm, otherwise they wouldn't get warm.
Google released a study that showed that hard drives running too cool (ie outside the manufacturers expected operating environment) had a similar increase in failures as drives running too hot. Additionally, all drives suffer wear and tear from spinning up and down - load/unload cycles on the drives heads, as well as thermal expansion/contraction from heating/cooling cycles, etc all accelerate wear and tear on the drive when you turn them on and off constantly.
Now, a poorly designed drive enclosure could cause a drive to run hotter than designed for, which could shorten the life of the drive, and for that reason I'd look for an external drive enclosure with a metal casing that will do a better job dissipating heat than plastic, but if you stuck your hand inside a computer, which has airflow and generally lots of open space around the drives, you'd be surprised how hot some models get. Some server hard drives even have burn warnings printed on them, and they live in high airflow enclosures in air conditioned rooms!
At the end of the day, your data is in all likelyhood more valuable than the cost of a single hard drive, and for that reason, its worth it to do your best to not have single copies of data out there, whether its on a hard drive, a tape drive, or a DVD. You need two copies minimum if you value your data.