Going EASY on a hard drive

[DisMyMac]

I've been watching full-length movies from an external USB hard drive (bus-powered), and I'm guessing that can't be good for the drive to have it spinning for so long. They are mostly 4GB files I ripped...

Do you think it would be better to first copy a movie to my internal hard drive and then play it from there? Or will the internal drive wear out just as fast?

Or even better- is there a way to force VLC, MPlayer, QuicktimePlayer, or Apple DVD Player to load the entire file into memory and then spin down the drive?

 

[GGJstudios]

Drives are designed to be used. You're not hurting anything.

 

[DisMyMac]

Drives are designed to be used. You're not hurting anything.

That's good to know.

I remember 10 years ago when people would set up a RAM disk for running seti@home. Maybe it wasn't necessary.

 

[AlphaDogg]

Or even better- is there a way to force VLC, MPlayer, QuicktimePlayer, or Apple DVD Player to load the entire file into memory and then spin down the drive?

There is no way to do so. You are not hurting the drive by keeping it spinning for so long. They are meant to be used, and most of them even have good warranties, so if it DOES break, you can get a new one free of charge...

 

[Julien]

Most HD's have MTBF rating of 1,000,000 hours or 114 years which means that in all likelihood the drive will work or fail regardless of the tiny bit of use. It's probably better for the drive to run 24/7 than spinning it up and down continuously.