HandBrake

Hello.

First of all, thanks for you great software.

I searched the forum but I didn't find any topics. Does encoding videos (e.g whole episodes of a drama) for a long time using Handbrake damage the hard drive? (Because of high i/o requests). I'm using my PC to encode videos with Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM + 64MB Buffer (normal HDDs not enterprise ones) btw. I mean will my HDD burn out or fail because of encoding? I've got important things in them.

If you don't have a backup, your at a high risk of loosing your data, regardless of whether you use HandBrake or not.

HandBrake can't damage your hard disk. Your hard disk can however wear out with age and usage and fail or just spontaneously fail for no apparently good reason as is often the case.

People encode large volumes of video onto the same drive for years without problems. Others save a word document and a 2 day old drive fails. Luck of the draw sometimes.

In the strictest sense, USING your hard drive (including powering it up) will eventually cause it to fail. Traditionally, the most likely cause of wear is power on/off cycles. Once the drive is spinning, the heads are flying, and nothing touches... it does not matter where the heads spend their time, be it flying over a single track (idle), repeatedly reading/writing a single track, or jumping all over the place writing/reading data.

In reality, the data flow in/out of Handbrake is not that great. MakeMKV flows much more data ripping a Bluray disk than Handbrake at its fastest settings.

No, hard discs are tougher than your programs, they're designed that way.
If your program ruins your hard disc, it means there was already something wrong with your hard disc.

It may damage your processer if you batch transcode for hours. I converted about a few dozen old VHS files with a lot of deinterlacing . My i7 went 100% on all 8 threads. I stopped, made sure my fans filters were clean and watched that the temperature did not get too hot.

I never seen my i7 work so hard. Good test of my cooling system.

Actually I avoid putting video files on my SS drive because they do have a limited number writes so why stress SS drives if you don't need the speed of a SS.

I've got important things in them.

Then you really should make regular backups - it's the only really safe way to go.

Unfortunately some HDDs fail after some time - and most of the time it has nothing to do with their actual workload.

Handbrake stresses your CPU much more than it stresses your hard drive. It will stress it even less if you're reading the source from one drive and writing to another. Don't worry about it.

That said, as others have pointed out, you MUST have a backup for your important files.