Turn off hard disks

[808smokey]

Does anyone use this feature:

"Turn off hard disks" in the Power save options? I never have and since it gets so hot in my house I thought that might help reduce some heat in when i'm not around.

[redwudz]

I've messed with that setting, but never saw much difference. XP is continually accessing the HD's for all kinds of OS operations, and they just keep turning back on. Here's a note from MS on it: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313300

[gitreel]

no, both of my systems are on all the time.

[flaninacupboard]

what redwudz said. i had a machine i was using for audio streaming over the wireless network on 24 hours a day. i didn't want the HDD noise so it was set to power down after three minutes. the drive was spinning down and then spinning up just two or three minutes later. given the drive says it will only do 40,000 spin up/down cycles, it considerably shortened it's life expectancy, to around 6 months. the drive died.

how hot is hot? hard drives are usually happy up to about 50C.

[808smokey]

Hot? Around 85 or so in the room where the computer is.

After reading the MS page and your inputs I'm leavin it off

[flaninacupboard]

85F i take it, not 85C ?!

85F is what, 32C or something?

[808smokey]

85F i take it, not 85C ?!

85F is what, 32C or something?

Yup 85F not C, 85F is 29C. I could sit in this room if it were 85C, that's 185F I'd be dead.