Question about IDE Hard Drives...

When the hard drives are idle, do the discs still spin? I can't imagine they do but for just in case.

I know if you go into standby or hibernation or whatever, of course the hard drives turn off. I'm just curious if the platters inside the hard drive spin even when idle doing nothing.

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Comments

Plantwiz

Interesting question!

If it is idle, then it should not be spinning. Couple interesting links below. The second gives an example of how to save battery life in laptops by using linux and spinning down your harddrive.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article242-page1.html

http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/7539/print

johnnynodough

A hard drive will remain constantly spinning when power is applied, and the speed will remain constant while power is applied. That is one of the things the prolongs the life of the HDD, if the platter motor were constantly spinning, not spinning, spinning, not spinning, etc the motor (and subseqeuntly the drive) would fail much quicker.