Re: [gentoo-user] Are those "green" drives any good?

[Bill Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>]

On Thu, 2012-05-10 at 12:20 -0400, Norman Invasion wrote:
> On 9 May 2012 04:47, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > As some know, I'm planning to buy me a LARGE hard drive to put all my
> > videos on, eventually.  The prices are coming down now.  I keep seeing
> > these "green" drives that are made by just about every company nowadays.
> >  When comparing them to a non "green" drive, do they hold up as good?
> > Are they as dependable as a plain drive?  I guess they are more
> > efficient and I get that but do they break quicker, more often or no
> > difference?
> >
> > I have noticed that they tend to spin slower and are cheaper.  That much
> > I have figured out.  Other than that, I can't see any other difference.
> >  Data speeds seem to be about the same.
> >
> 
> They have an ugly tendency to nod off at 6 second intervals.
> This runs up "193 Load_Cycle_Count" unacceptably: as many
> as a few hundred thousand in a year & a million cycles is
> getting close to the lifetime limit on most hard drives.  I end
> up running some iteration of
> # hdparm -B 255 /dev/sda
> every boot.
> 

hdparm installs an init script with a /etc/conf.d/hdparm file which
allows you to set things up at whatever run level you are using.  Also
beware things like "laptopmode" which take over rewriting the kernel and
harddrive parameters for dynamic power saving (i.e., different between
running on battery as to from mains) - really does work but can kill a
drive with Load_Cycle_Counts so drive life can be foreshortened if you
get too zealous (i.e., very short spindown times and using a journalled
file system.

BillK