Turn PC off every night or leave it on 24/7? (Discussion)

[wirednuts]

My experience is the opposite for drives failing. I have seen more fail when cycled than when powered continuously . I have never had a single failure of a drive that was working, it always failed at the next power on.

hard drives are constantly spinning down and up anyway, they have built in sleep modes for when theyre idle. and what good is a harddrive that only works if its left spinning? its going to shut off at some point, and thats when youre going to lose your data. and a lot of times you can catch the problem before its too late (boot up in the morning, drive takes awhile to spin up and read. now you know its dying. but if its always on 24/7 its going to get so bad before it dies that once you turn it off you just instantly lost everything with no chance of recovery).


and furthermore, i think it was mentioned that drives are always accumulating dust and thats the real cause of most problems. the more idle time you give them the less dust they suck up.


and i also just want to note, THANK GOD for ssd's. thank my heavenly lord. now just cut the prices in half and were in business.

 

[stag3]

my pc is on 24/7 unless i'm on vacation, or im replacing hardware

 

[wirednuts]

my pc is on 24/7 unless i'm on vacation, or im replacing hardware

isnt that like an extra $20 a month or so in electricity? compared to letting it sleep at night?

 

[Modelworks]

hard drives are constantly spinning down and up anyway, they have built in sleep modes for when theyre idle.

No. Hard drives spin as long as they are powered unless the OS turns them off, there is no internal timing for sleep. Drives have a 3 second delayed spin up option but nothing in the firmware for sleep, that would wreak havoc on an OS.

and what good is a harddrive that only works if its left spinning? its going to shut off at some point, and thats when youre going to lose your data. and a lot of times you can catch the problem before its too late (boot up in the morning, drive takes awhile to spin up and read. now you know its dying. but if its always on 24/7 its going to get so bad before it dies that once you turn it off you just instantly lost everything with no chance of recovery).

It isn't about keeping a HD spinning because it will not restart. It is the constant spinning up that adds wear to a drive. There is no way around it since the parts involved experience a surge of current with every start up until the platters reach targeted speed and then the current usage is minimal . I can show you many WD drives with burned out diodes from excessive current .

and furthermore, i think it was mentioned that drives are always accumulating dust and thats the real cause of most problems. the more idle time you give them the less dust they suck up.

Dust and idle time have nothing to do with hard drives themselves, that is a result of poor maintenance by owners. If you don't have fans cooling a drive and don't prevent dust buildup in the case then any drive can fail no matter how seldom you use the drive. With a fan cooling a drive it takes a lot of dust to cause heat related failure.

 

[Modelworks]

I've heard fan coolers on hdd can cause the hdd to run too cool, as in the fluid bearing has trouble. Any truth to this? The room with my computer is usually in the low 60s.

Nope , not true. The oil used is a synthetic oil designed for the purpose of bearings, temp range is -57 to 177C .

 

[alkemyst]

hard drives are constantly spinning down and up anyway, they have built in sleep modes for when theyre idle. and what good is a harddrive that only works if its left spinning? its going to shut off at some point, and thats when youre going to lose your data. and a lot of times you can catch the problem before its too late (boot up in the morning, drive takes awhile to spin up and read. now you know its dying. but if its always on 24/7 its going to get so bad before it dies that once you turn it off you just instantly lost everything with no chance of recovery).


and furthermore, i think it was mentioned that drives are always accumulating dust and thats the real cause of most problems. the more idle time you give them the less dust they suck up.


and i also just want to note, THANK GOD for ssd's. thank my heavenly lord. now just cut the prices in half and were in business.

/facepalm.

 

[DigDog]

allow me to join in the facepalming

 

[Vegemeister]

It's just plain sill to turn a desktop computer off for any reason other than hardware changes, transport, or disconnection from power (ex. the batteries in your UPS are about to die). You get 95% of the power savings with S3 suspend, and you don't lose what you were doing or have to wait 40 seconds for your computer to be ready.

 

[wirednuts]

ive been pwnd!

im not upset though. truth is good

 

[TylerHartman]

Put it in sleep mode/Standby as recommend by others, I've been doing it for years without any issues takes less power, less damage to hardware, and it takes like less then 20secs to resume, That's my vote!

 

[sm625]

No. I lived in Florida for years and had plenty of gear zapped which was disconnected.

So the laws of physics do not apply in florida eh? Nice to know. Only in florida can something get fried if it is disconnected.

 

[scrubman]

I leave my oven on all the time so I dont have to wait for it to preheat.

 

[Revolution 11]

So the laws of physics do not apply in florida eh? Nice to know. Only in florida can something get fried if it is disconnected.

Considering the hanging chad incident in 2000, I am not surprised if Florida doesn't follow the laws of physics.

 

[bryanl]

It isn't about keeping a HD spinning because it will not restart. It is the constant spinning up that adds wear to a drive. There is no way around it since the parts involved experience a surge of current with every start up until the platters reach targeted speed and then the current usage is minimal . I can show you many WD drives with burned out diodes from excessive current .

Has using the low-current start option jumper helped protect the electronics?

 

[TrmntR]

My pc is on 24/7 and goes to sleep after 10 minutes AFK, resume is almost instantly so keeping it this way!

 

[Revolution 11]

Constant sleep is very easy for most users to do but I am worried about data corruption with long periods of sleep. Wouldn't background radiation cause bit errors during sleep periods as the RAM is still powered and holding the data?

 

[bico]

i have my laptop powered on 24/7. it draws ~30W on full load and ~6W with lcd turned off and idling. on the other hand my desktop gets ~200W under full load and ~60W when idling. so it's like leaving 60W bulb on all the time. so i can check news/mail on the laptop and power on desktop only for games/work as for preserving data, hibernation is the best (assuming you power on the machine once or twice daily)

 

[bico]

Considering the hanging chad incident in 2000, I am not surprised if Florida doesn't follow the laws of physics.

if the lightning strikes very close or directly at your house emp is very strong and as long it has any metal inside that's not protected by grounded metal cage, it gets charged

 

[ShadowVVL]

I always turn mine off, why waste money on electric bills?

 

[Sunny129]

I always turn mine off, why waste money on electric bills?

i agree w/ your sentiment. that being said, my machines (yes, plural) run 24/7 and they're never wasting power. if it isn't obvious 6 months and 144 posts later, its what you do (or don't do) w/ your computer that determines whether or not one is wasting power...

 

[silvscorp]

Put it in Hibernation every night, especially in the hot season, less heat and noise generated in the room. Resume time is very reasonable.

In the past, I've been leaving system on 24/7. I turned it off when I leave for trip (a week) after I return, the HD is busted. The internal of the HD have expended over the time and sudden cool down pretty much destroyed it.

 

[piasabird]

Well I would not leave programs running on a PC overnight if it is not a server with some critical function you want available. There are various states of sleep. If you have a video card you use for gaming you may not want that running all night and you may be better off just shutting it down. I have wondered with these new motherboards maybe the video reverts back to the basic always on integrated or CPU Intel HD video when not playing a game.

 

[Red Squirrel]

When I built my kick ass i7 machine with a SSD and win7, I had the intention of turning it off when not in use, but considering it takes a good 10 minutes to login, I leave it running. It's actually a piss off because everything else is fast, except that "welcome" screen which takes a good 10 minutes, and unlike previous versions of windows I cannot see what's actually going on so there's no way to troubleshoot it. Unless I switch to Linux I will continue to leave it running 24/7. One advantage is I get lot of folding@home points with that machine. On really hot days I do turn it off though.

My server stuff always runs 24/7 though. I recently added a UPS setup that lasts about 4-5 hours to be able to ride through 99% of outages. Already had one outage so far this year that would have caused me to have to shut down. That particular outage was scheduled to be longer than what the batteries could handle but it ended up being cut short so I was safe. Made me think I should add two more batteries so I can double the capacity. The nice thing about my new setup is that it's very expandable. Deep cycle marine batteries have lot of capacity and are relatively cheap compared to an equivalent normal UPS.

 

[bico]

hmm, kickass machine with 10 minutes to login? definitely you can do better

 

[Revolution 11]

When I built my kick ass i7 machine with a SSD and win7, I had the intention of turning it off when not in use, but considering it takes a good 10 minutes to login, I leave it running.

You have a SSD with i7 processor and Win 7 and it takes you 10 minutes? Madness, pure madness.

I hope you have gone through msconfig and removed the startup items you don't need. That alone should halve your boot time.

Here's a comparison for you. My 2007 XP Dell laptop with a creaking old and abused hard drive constantly packed to a single GB of free space with 2 GB of RAM takes about 3 minutes to boot. Maybe four minutes on a bad day. This is from boot to usable computer.