f/fgeorge wrote:

On Fri, 09 Dec 2005 12:11:49 GMT, "JacobH"
<Geoff_Hannington@IEE.ORGasm> wrote:

In that case can we not improve our HDDs life expectancy by increasing the write rate, by reducing the max disk write time interval? Mine is 'at most every 10Secs' so if I make it 5Secs maybe I'll double its lifetime?

NO!

Spin-up and spin-down, and thermal cycling of HDDs reduces their life span. However, leaving them running continuously also causes them to wear and fail. I've never seen any hard numbers to say to what extent or for what significance each failure mechanism combines to cause a fail.

If you're going to let your HDDs spin down, then you may as well leave them spun down for as long as possible.

Myself, I'd have Boinc only update to the disk every /few/ /hours/, for example every 720 minutes.

You can make your own guesses.


Then also, I've had desktop HDDs run continuously for a few years before failure or an upgrade.

Happy crunchin',
Martin



"How do you power off this machine?"
- Linus Torvalds, when upgrading linux.cs.helsinki.fi, and after using the machine for several months