I am running my old 500gb 3.5" HDD in a Orico 3.5 inch housing/enclosure as a network drive which means it is directly connected to my Telstra Modem. Its been 4 days already since its connection and seems like running ok 24/7. Is this safe to do so or is it something thats not recommended by the gurus?
Running a 3.5" HDD Sata Hard Drive 24/7 - Reliable?
[Deactivated] on 11/02/2020 - 18:40
Last edited 12/02/2020 - 00:07 by 1 other user
Last edited 12/02/2020 - 00:07 by 1 other user
Comments
Yes perfectly OK. The spin up, spin down, vibration, and temp and power variability that shorten the life of a hdd.
Just remember that all drive will fail. It's just a matter of when so keep backup.
I'd be more concerned with how you managed to wedge a 3.5" HDD in a 2.5" HDD enclosure?
If the data is important, I'd buy a new Surveillance or NAS HDD, since they are designed to run 24/7 and a bit hotter.
Just delete some data to make it smaller
If the data is important - back it up!
Surveillance or NAS or whatever the marketing buzzword will fail. You might get replacement drive 3 years down the road when you pay more for these drives - but without backup you wont get your data back.
Of course redundancy is king, but a Surveillance or NAS drive will be LESS LIKELY to die in a given time frame than an older basic HDD 24/7.
You have some serious skills to bend the law of physics like that.
Maybe OP is MacGyver?
if you can see it, use to constantly checking its status
If you care about any of the data back it up, preferably to some where off site. And if it is really important set up multiple back ups too different locations. Or just use a cloud provider with geo redundancy.
Would you recommend any cloud service?
I need to just to save some of photograph that I take with my dslrs. All the photos from Pixel 3a are uploaded to Google Photos. There is nothing significantly important on this HDD and its like 10 years old :D
About half of all my drives die eventually. But by the time they do they are so old that I wanted to get rid of them anyway to replace with a bigger one. It's usually a slow death so you get some warning.
It's safe.
Backup any important data to another drive and cloud.