Hard drive question

[hrlslcbr]

Hello. I'm not sure if I can post this kind of questions here, but... anyway.
I've seen that when I restart my computer running Windows XP, the HDDs don't stop spinning, but keep going as if Windows was still running. But in Linux (ubuntu), when I restart my computer, the HDDs stop and then start spinning again (I checked the counters on the SMART info on my drives). Is there any way to make Linux act like windows and let the drives keep spinning? (because I know that HDDs have a set number of times they can start/stop and want to avoid killing my drives faster ).

Thanks.

[Allan Gabston_Howell]

Don't worry about it.

Normal thermal stresses aside, your drives will live a normal life; because there is no "set nuimber of times" that the drives can be stopped/started.

They fail when they fail.

Proper form with Linux is to restart services. (To restart x, do: Ctrl + Alt + Backspace)
You never have to restart the system unless you've upgraded/replaced/patched the kernel.
Ubuntu forces you to use the sudo command to do many things, and I'm not a user of Ubuntu; so I can't give you first-hand knowledge of what they've done to the CLI environment. My informal understanding of the situation is that its extremely restrictive.
You should probably hit the Ubuntu forums to learn their methods of restarting services and avoid restarting/power-cycling your machine.

[hrlslcbr]

Thanks for your answer. Well, I actually don't have ubuntu installed anymore (now using arch, nice distro!). I thought that the start/stop cycles were one of the things that helped reduce the life of the HDDs... .
Anyway; thanks for your help.

[TwistedLincoln]

I concur -- I've used and sold countless hard drives, and I've seen no connection between drives that are left running all the time and those that are not. I have a hard drive array that uses IDE drives, and those drives have been running 24 hours a day for months now... and were running for much, much longer than that when I bought the array used. I've had no issues with the drives.

On the flip side, I power on and off my PC in my office several times a day, and its hard drives are in no worse shape than the arrays-- and those drives were purchased used as well.

You should be fine.

Congrats on using Linux! Have fun!

[hrlslcbr]

Congrats on using Linux! Have fun!

Thanks