Maximizing life of external HD

I use these 250 Gig drives to archive photos and only need to access them once or twice a month. What is the on/off cycle life rating of these drives? That is, how many on/off cycles are these rated for? If left running constantly, what is their expected/rated runtime life? My reason for asking is that many suggest leaving externals run all the time and I'm just curious to know if, in MY case, they will last longer if I only turn them on as needed (about 2 times a month) or leave them running all the time.

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Keeping hard drives running will cost more on electric and heat generated from drives as I've found out on of my 160gig sata drives burnt out because I was using pc 24hrs aday and night if I had put a cooler on the bottom it would have lasted 5 years but I only lasted 8 months you can give your hard drives 2 twice or even 5 times life span if kept at room temperature listen to you own advice it's your data and hard drives do what you wish I'm only her for advive you can tak itor leave it

Posted on Aug 14, 2007

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