Does never sleeping hard drives improve their life?

[bigwig]

I have an iMac that I never let sleep because of the belief that desktop hard drives are most reliable when spinning 24/7, and that spin-up/spin-down cycles caused by sleeping or shutdowns stresses them and causes them to break. Of course, I built that belief over many years. Is that still generally true for modern drives? Are the so-called "green" drives, seemingly designed to frequently stop/start what with their automatic sleep modes, hardened against this stress? By contrast, aren't laptop drives are expected to be frequently spun up/down and so are specifically designed to handle it?

 

[alust2013]

I'm pretty sure that current hard drives are made to handle that stress, as that is how most users use their computers. I wouldn't worry about it and let it sleep, because it uses a decent amount of power even when idle and awake. I would say most drive failures are due to a defect in the drive or very hard use, rather than spinning up and down.

 

[MacinDan]

I sleep/wake my computer several times a day, and I've never had a hard drive failure (except for the one I physically dropped). I think operating temperature is a much more important factor in a hard drive's longevity.

 

[bigwig]

What do you think of turning on "sleep hard drives when possible"? That could cause dozens of restarts a day.

 

[niuniu]

I keep mine on permanently and we must be talking around 4 years of use now with no problems (15inch MBP 2006 base model).