The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/Exotic_Emergency642 on 2024-12-31 14:43:52.

I have had a 3 disk RAID array (internal system board controller) in use for about 4 years now. System software issues forced me to wipe the entire system recently and, in the process, I added an extra drive to the RAID array.

All three disks that have been in use ~4 years (power off / spin down disabled)

SMART:

~40,000 hours of operation

~100 power cycles

A drive I had used with an Xbox that I no longer needed

SMART:

~15,000 hours of operation

~100,000 power cycles

I should mention that these drives have all been shucked from portable housings as this is the easiest way to procure large ones around here.

This makes me curious as to around how many power cycles indicates that a drive is on life support?

I’ve had wonderful results from drives with low cycle counts and being able to reach much higher hour counts. In fact, all my internal drives have always been set to disable the idle spin down power down process I fear is a drive killer (just a gut instinct, I have no data to back this up). To this day I haven’t seen a failure with an internal drive since I stopped buying Maxtor drives 20 years or so ago. Bunches of portables gone bad (they do take more heat and vibration and many time the WD controller board just fails instead of the drive)

No, I promise I didn’t play the Xbox for 1 and a half years lol, the darn machine must have been waking the drive multiple times a day when the system was sleeping!