Re: turning hard drives on / off

On Wed, 9 Sep 2009 13:06:06 -0700 (PDT), yawnmoth
<> wrote:

> I have 2x 1TB hard drives and would like one to be a backup of the
> other. I could set up a RAID0 array, or something, but what I was
> thinking I'd like to do, instead, would be to use robocopy to keep the
> two hard drives synchronized. Maybe run it through the Windows
> Scheduler once a week or once a month and turn the drive off when it's
> not in use.



I strongly recommend that you not use an internal drive as a backup of
another, not with RAID 0 nor any other way.

I don't recommend backup to a second non-removable hard drive because
it leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original and
backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches,
nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer.

In my view, secure backup needs to be on removable media, and not kept
in the computer. For really secure backup (needed, for example, if the
life of your business depends on your data) you should have multiple
generations of backup, and at least one of those generations should be
stored off-site.


> I've read that turning the drive on and off can be worse the drive
> than just keeping it on, but I don't imagine that's true if your
> keeping it off for days or weeks at a time.


In my view, it doesn't matter at all, and ether way is fine. Modern
drives are built well enough so that they don't fail because of extra
turning on and off.


> I've also read that the main cause of hard drive failures isn't
> related to the fact that the platters spinning but rather due to the
> head writing.


Also not true. Good drives seldom fail because of how they are used.
In almost every case, a drive gets replaced because it becomes too
small for the current time period, not because of how they were used.
Don't worry about things like this.


> Be that as it may, I'd still be worried that Windows
> would try to periodically read or write to it even when I haven't
> accessed content on it, myself, for several weeks.
>
> Finally, I'm aware that Windows has a Power Management thing whereby
> you can turn hard drives off, but in this case, I don't want all hard
> drives to be shut off - I just want one to be shut off.
>
> Any ideas?



Yes. As I said above, put it into an external USB enclosure and shut
it off by turning it off and unplugging it from the computer. Anything
less than that is a weak form of backup.


--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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