Switching on and off (external) USB hard drives is stress: less durable, reliable?

Switching on and off (external) USB hard drives (2,5" and 3,5") is said to be a big stress and to reduce the durability / reliability negatively for them? Is that really true?

 

Re: Switching on and off (external) USB hard drives is stress: less durable, reliable

And, if yes, what does that mean for the use of a hard disk? To switch it off / on as less as possible?

 

Re: Switching on and off (external) USB hard drives is stress: less durable, reliable

Where did you hear/read that?

Whether it is internal or external, that HDD will last (or not) either way.

I keep my one drive running 24x7 and disabled my power settings on it. Since, I don't want to wait the 3 seconds for it to spin up for the content that I need.

The Velociraptor is the drive I'm talking about, the other two are SSD's.

 

Re: Switching on and off (external) USB hard drives is stress: less durable, reliable

I have heard / read it quite often, I have heard a technician or more than one saying it, heard it in electronics shops, in forums...

http://superuser.com/questions/17228/is-turning-off-hard-disks-harmful
http://serverfault.com/questions/29...indown-mode-on-modern-hard-drives/29359#29359

Well, yes, that would be good, but...

Yes, those settings are strongly recommended by people stating that theory. Those power settings (a technician said it) enabled shall cause many defects of drives. Most of the drives he saw, he said, being broken ran on a system those settings are enabled on.

I do not know if such drives are included in that statement.