Do you turn off "instant rewind" to save Hard Disc life because someone posted so...?

[StooMonster]

I know people who turn off Instant Rewind because "it extends the life of Sky+ hard disk". (They read this in a post on an internet discussion board.)

Modern hard drives like a Seagate Barracuda are 600,000-hour parts (as measured by its mean-time-between-failures rating); or approximately 69 years always on. Maxtor Diamond Max are similar too.

I'd like to know how long they expect to extend the lives of their hard disks to? Is the objective to make the Sky+ box work for 100 years?

Or should you not believe every you read on the internet?

StooMonster

[SimonO]

Mine is set for one hour and I've never had any problems, in fact (touch wood) I've had very few problems with Sky+ full stop... I agree that running the HDD 24x7 shouldn't be an issue...

IMO, although I've got no evidence to back it up, I think many Sky+ related issues will be down to dirty mains... I'm running mine through a decent APC power stip and I'm looking at their mini UPS power strips as a possible upgrade...

[Stereo Steve]

Shouldn't hurt it. The Pace box seems a little fragile anyway but the only part that would get extra strain doing that is the HDD which should be able to cope with that, in fact it may be good for it to keep the arms moving as they can get gummed up if left spinning idle for long periods of time. I never did it with mine as I asssumed it would produce more heat and the fan ran enough as it was.

[STOWITBELOW]

SooMonster, you've stated what I previously believed, but didn't have the figures. It should be obsolete long before it wears out, - unless it breaks!

[hemp3]

More damage will be done to hard drives when constantly going from rest to spin(as you can tell im not technical). Having the disk spinning should infact increase its life.

[Faust]

Originally posted by StooMonster
I know people who turn off Instant Rewind because "it extends the life of Sky+ hard disk". (They read this in a post on an internet discussion board.)

Modern hard drives like a Seagate Barracuda are 600,000-hour parts (as measured by its mean-time-between-failures rating); or approximately 69 years always on. Maxtor Diamond Max are similar too.

I'd like to know how long they expect to extend the lives of their hard disks to? Is the objective to make the Sky+ box work for 100 years?

Or should you not believe every you read on the internet?

StooMonster

Is this information based on having sufficient cooling with a good quality fan? or is it based on poor cooling design, and cooking the HDD for long periods of time? i.e. Sky+ I have asked Sky tech to give me a definitive answer to this question and they state "they don't have enough relevant data information to make a judgement at this time as to whether running IR may cause long term damage to the HD" Make of that what you will.

[JohnG]

If you have the instant rewind switched on, can you still record 2 other programs at the same time ?

[hemp3]

Yes the two are not related

[JohnG]

Thanks. In that case I might turn mine back on again

Modern hard drives like a Seagate Barracuda are 600,000-hour part

a few years ago I had three Seagate 500Mb drives pack up after only 4 weeks of use in a PC. It was clearly a batch problem and the replacement I got was IBM badged and worked fine untill I upgraded for a larger one.

Typical reliable life of a computer hard drive seems to be 3-5 years. More than that and I would expect problems. I think 69,000 hours is optimistic. Ideal conditions perhaps.

[Norman]

I turned off instant rewind because it seemed to slow everything down (menu navigation etc).
I've never worried about HDD life and I agree with Stu, HDD failure isn't that common these days (bad batch's being the exception).

[Geezer]

Originally posted by JohnG
If you have the instant rewind switched on, can you still record 2 other programs at the same time ?

Yes becuase you would have to be either watching one of the recordings or a previously saved programme

[krismcewan]

I had mine turned off because of HD burning out fears but then i was told that if its going to burn our better to have it burn out in warranty rather than not so i turned mine back on.

But hell if it burns out then its only about £50 for a bigger size anyway.
Kris

[Gort]

69 years !!! Don't know about that - I've had lots of hard-disks that have crashed. None have lasted 5years. (Click of death, IBM Death-Stars anyone.)

But then they are cheap to buy now-a-days. Roughly £0.50 Gigabyte.

I never turn my pc off and have 3harddisks constantly on. But they can be set to spin down to save power so I expect $ky+ would do this.

Don't know if $ky use 7200rpm spinners, the 5400rpm's don't get so hot.