> Is spindown any worse than reboot to DOS, hard reset, and power off?
> Most people do (some of) these things every day.
Of course spindown is no worse than the typical DOS usage of daily shutoff.
But we are talking here of voluntary activity; would you voluntarily use
DOS? ;-) Looking at the tradeoff, it seems to me that in MOST cases, the
only thing to be gained by spindown is a few pennies of energy costs per
year. Against this you are expending quite a bit of disk-drive life; if
you feel that this is worth it for you, then less power to you. But I
believe that it is a very poor bet for MOST of us. Intermittent operation
of a disk drive will most probably shorten its life. Yea, even the
calendar life rather than just the power-on life.
Harvey
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harvey Fishman |
fishman@panix.com | Sum, ergo cogito.
718-258-7276 |