We have a modest server at work running Windows Server 2012 and we recently bought new hard drives for backups.
The backups are scheduled every night. The disk is being used only a few minutes per day since we do incremental backups and it takes generally less than a hour to complete.
However, the disk is spinning 24/7. So I assume that it would be best for the hard disk lifespan to spin down (am I wrong here?).
The hard drive is a Seagate Archive 8 TB. It is connected to the server with a SATA to USB3 dock. Disk Write caching is turned off.
So could I just turn the dock off (even if the drive is spinning) in the morning and turn it back on when leaving for the night? Or is it better to just make it spin down? Or is it better to just do nothing..?