Continuous mp3 play and Hard Drives

[iLLWiLL]

Does anyone know if running your hard drive for hours and hours with music (mp3's) shorten the life of a hard drive??? I'm the type of person who needs either music playing or the tv running in order to fall asleep at nite.

I noticed that my hard drive light flashes every few seconds even when Windows Media Player is the only app running. I ask because I've had 2 hard drives die on me in the last 3 years in my current system. (First drive was a Quantum under warranty, which was replaced with a Maxtor -- now I have a new Western Digital.)

thanks!!

[ray]

Originally posted by iLLWiLL
Does anyone know if running your hard drive for hours and hours with music (mp3's) shorten the life of a hard drive??? I'm the type of person who needs either music playing or the tv running in order to fall asleep at nite.

I noticed that my hard drive light flashes every few seconds even when Windows Media Player is the only app running. I ask because I've had 2 hard drives die on me in the last 3 years in my current system. (First drive was a Quantum under warranty, which was replaced with a Maxtor -- now I have a new Western Digital.)

thanks!!

I was running on the same 10gb Western Digital drive for the past 6 years until it finally died. I had a small selection of music there that I would always leave on when I went to sleep. I think you may have just been unlucky with the first couple drives. I figure 6 years life out of a hard drive is great!

[hapoo]

I'm not sure if WiMP supports this but I know you can do it in winamp. Set the buffer really high so everytime it wants to play a song it loads the whole thing into memory at the begining. Of course assuming a song is only 5 min long it won't make much of a difference, and the hard drive probably won't have a chance to powerdown which is probably for the best since its better to keep a drive on than turn it on and off.

[iLLWiLL]

Yeah, hopefully I get much longer life out of this Western Digital HD. It is significantly faster than my previous 2 drives...



I'm not sure if WiMP supports this but I know you can do it in winamp. Set the buffer really high so everytime it wants to play a song it loads the whole thing into memory at the begining.
I just downloaded Winamp -- but where is the setting to set the buffer, I can't find it under Preferences? Thanks!!