Eject hard drives before sleeping

[jnizer]

I've gotten mixed feedback about whether it's good or bad to constantly sleep your computer. I sleep it sometimes and shut it down completely other times. My question is, should I eject hard drives before I put my computer to sleep? I use lacie quadras (sp?) for video editing and it's easy for me to concentrate if I just send it to sleep with the project open on the hard drive and start cranking first thing in the am.

Is this bad for my comp or my drives? I haven't noticed any warmth coming from the drive in the morning but the damn light never turns off and I get stressed about it crashing on me.

I use a 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 duo on 10.5.8.

thanks

 

[miles01110]

I always shut down my drives if I'm not at the machine. Drives have a limited lifetime.

 

[mstrze]

I always shut down my drives if I'm not at the machine. Drives have a limited lifetime.

But what's more damaging to a hard drive, the power-off-on spin-up cycling twice (or more) a day, or having them spinning constantly?

Agreed they have a limited life...as everything with moving parts does. I just don't know which is better. :/

 

[miles01110]

I don't really know, actually. I've had so many drives die on me by now that I don't give a second thought to what's "better", because they're all going to die at some point. At the moment I just spin mine up once every day or two in order to do the backup.

 

[mscriv]

Sadly the leave running always vs. use sleep vs. power off debate = which came first the chicken or the egg. I don't know that there is a definitive answer so use what works best for you and your workflow.

 

[mstrze]

I would think/assume that if you power up and down multiple times a day...like if you turn the drives off every time you leave your desk or something like that, it would be worse than leaving them on all the time.

My guess is that up and down once a day is similar to leaving on.