71-TiB NAS with twenty-four 4TB drives hasn't had a single drive failure for ten years — owner outlines key approaches to assure HDD longevity

Turning off your NAS will save on electric costs and save your hard drives.

Turning off your NAS will save on electric costs and save your hard drives.

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Secret to longevity: keep it turned off 85% of the time.
- Note that this advice doesn't work for SSDs. The little bastards hate being powered off for too long. They prefer always-on to have their self-correcting routines work continuously.
- Won't drives just hibernate if not active for a while?
Not a single drive failure is damn impressive.
- Only if you actually have it running that long. The whole thing is powered off most of the time.
  
  That's how I plan to live to 160...being powered off most of the time
  
  Sure, and while that is not something commercial deployments can do, it's reasonable for personal home NAS.

9 comments