Poll for those who leave their computers on 24/7

[lizardth]

I crunch for the TeAm so no.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

No, because the HDD power saving feature in WinXP is FUBARed.
Damned thing will randomly power-up the HDD for no good reason, leading to even more on-off cycles :|

 

[spidey07]

I have it truly sleep.

Takes a few seconds to wake up.

 

[eits]

Originally posted by: theknight571
I set the screen saver and have the monitor go to sleep...but that's it.

word.

 

[SuperSix]

Originally posted by: rbV5
I have my displays power down...not the HD.

 

[Umberger]

yes, but they spin back up if they are needed.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: WhoBeDaPlaya
No, because the HDD power saving feature in WinXP is FUBARed.
Damned thing will randomly power-up the HDD for no good reason, leading to even more on-off cycles :|

I used to find that happening a lot, but when I switched from using Nvidia's SATA RAID controller to a Promise 4 port model the problem went away completely... maybe somthing to do with the controller BIOS or the Promise driver being more mature?

Also I always use fixed virtual-memory size which should help under any circumstances.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Also use fix pagefile sizes here. I'm not too worried about my main rig, but it would've been kinda nice if the power-down feature works in my fileserver (HDDs hooked up to Promise Ultra/100s).

 

[neutralizer]

I don't leave my comp on 24/7 but still have the hdd shutoff after 4 hours just so my hdd doesn't have to spin all the time.

 

[biff 24 2000]

nope

 

[Shawn]

yep. i have 4 hard drives and I pretty much don't ever need to access them all at once so i have them spin down after 15 mins.

 

[notfred]

The entire *POINT* of having RAM, is that it does the same thing as a hard drive, except faster. When you read files off the hard drive, they're read into RAM, where the processor can access them quickly. The reason you buy more RAM is so you can have more files open at the same time withtout having to wait for them to be read off the hard drive.

So, when a computer turns off the disks, it reads all the neccesary files into RAM first. Then if it needs to get anything off the hard drive later, it spins it back up again.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: notfred
The entire *POINT* of having RAM, is that it does the same thing as a hard drive, except faster. When you read files off the hard drive, they're read into RAM, where the processor can access them quickly. The reason you buy more RAM is so you can have more files open at the same time withtout having to wait for them to be read off the hard drive.

So, when a computer turns off the disks, it reads all the neccesary files into RAM first. Then if it needs to get anything off the hard drive later, it spins it back up again.

True, but as people have said, the real world implementation of that in XP isn't always so perfect.

 

[sswingle]

I dont even set the monitor to off, i hit the power switch on it.

 

[ZetaEpyon]

On the only PC I leave on 24/7, I've also generally got stuff downloading 24/7, so there is little point to setting the HD to spin down. For my other two computers, I have them set to power down at night and turn back on shortly before I ususally return from work; saves power and keeps my apartment much cooler, but also no point to having the drives spin down.

 

[EyeMWing]

I have 15 hard drives accessed at random all night by various automated processes (my PC used to ostensibly be a fileserver with a 7800GT, now it's a fileserver with a Rage 128 like all the other fileservers). The power and thermal strains of spinning those up and down all night would be immense.

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: lyssword
lol if you are downloading something and ur hd turns off..

That wouldn't ever happen because it's downloading... The HDD turns off when there is no activity so it's non issue.

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: lizardth
I crunch for the TeAm so no.

You can crunch and let the drive sleep FYI..

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
Internet doesn't work when you're in Standby or Hibernation, so that kind of defeats the purpose of leaving your computer on overnight too.

not necessarily. what if you just leave it on so you don't have to start it up again in the morning? that kinda sounds stupid, but i guess people might do it.