Keep Those Drives Running

Google owns lots of hard drives, and has found they are more reliable (don't break down as often) when the drives are kept running warm.

A place that repairs hard drives finds that the worst time is summertime -- not because of the heat, but because of voltage fluctuations created by power-hungry air conditioners kicking in.

Hard drives are delicate creatures, crafted to very fine tolerances. It seems, then that the best thing is to keep them running all the time.

Sure, operating systems have power-saving options for turning off the drives after 5 minutes, an hour, or whatever. But after having read about the experience of Google, I now leave all my hard drives running all the time.

As for air conditioners, well, I don't have any. But I do get brief power dips at least once a month. To protect against that, all my computers are plugged into battery-run UPSs (uninterruptable power supplies), to ensure against voltage fluctuations.