Turning off computer or leaving it on with an SSD boot and HDD storage...

[Lob]

Previously before I bought an SSD I just left my computer on all night unless I was leaving for an extended period of time.

Currently with my SSD I'm doing the same thing. Now obviously like everyone I'm trying to keep my SSD from wear and tear but I'm not going to extremes such as moving user directories and what not. Just the standard initial tweaks and installing games to HDD (mostly due to size).

My question is there any extra wear or problems for the SSD just leaving my computer on all night/day? Or should I be shutting it down every night? Ignoring the electric bill savings, is there any benefit in doing so? Only reason I ask is that someone told me that you should turn off your computer every night if you have an SSD.

Thanks

 

[exdeath]

Sleep mode... seriously with an SSD it will be back up to the desktop faster than your monitor can come out of standby.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

There's actually more reason to turn off your computer when you had spinning platters in there. It's funny that you would even mention power savings when you've been leaving your computer on 24/7 with spinning disks in it. SSDs use almost an order of magnitude less power than spinning disks.

Even if your computer is under heavy load a lot of the time, the whole "SSDs will wear out" is one of the most over-hyped memes out there, and half my posts on this forum seem to end up being me blowing it out of the water time and time again. It's annoying. Maybe I should start asking where people are hearing this, because it can't be from reading this forum. I need to start going to those other sites and backhanding the ones that keep propagating it.

Anyway, even under heavy load, an SSD will not wear out. Does your computer sit and crunch hard drive writes when you leave it on at night? I doubt it (Night at the Museum meets Toy Story meets Hackers?). The only real consideration for your quandary is power usage (see paragraph 1).

 

[Coup27]

Turning your computer off a night will not increase the wear on your SSD. Hibernation on the other hand, will. Hibernation will write everything stored in to memory to your SSD which could be between 2GB - 8GB or more, depending on how much RAM you have. SSD genocide over the long term.

Sleep/Standby is a shortcut to SSD problems as many drives do, or have suffered stability problems when sleep mode is used.

As exdeath has said, SSD's boot so fast that there is no need to even consider not shutting it down.

 

[Lob]

Turning your computer off a night will not increase the wear on your SSD. Hibernation on the other hand, will. Hibernation will write everything stored in to memory to your SSD which could be between 2GB - 8GB or more, depending on how much RAM you have. SSD genocide over the long term.

Sleep/Standby is a shortcut to SSD problems as many drives do, or have suffered stability problems when sleep mode is used.

As exdeath has said, SSD's boot so fast that there is no need to even consider not shutting it down.

You got it backwards, I was wondering about the wear and tear for leaving it on overnight. Would shutting it down be better for the SSD or have any impact on that department if any considering majority of the time it's idle when I leave it on overnight.

I'd like to stress I'm not trying to baby my SSD and not "use" it just trying to educate myself on whether the statement about shutting down your computer at night because you have an SSD is better for it or not is a fact or just misguided info. By the way this was from a family member who was talking about it when I inquired about him constantly going offline every night when he use to not.

 

[DirkGently1]

What wear and tear? Do you worry about 'wear and tear' on your CPU/RAM/Soundcard when you usually leave you PC on all night??

 

[Coup27]

You got it backwards, I was wondering about the wear and tear for leaving it on overnight. Would shutting it down be better for the SSD or have any impact on that department if any considering majority of the time it's idle when I leave it on overnight.

To be honest there is probably no difference between the two. As there are no moving parts and everything inside is electronic, leaving it on or turning it off would probably have no affect on the life span of the components. A comparison could be made to mobile phones or ipads which (at least my sisters) never get turned off.

From an environmental point of view I do not see a reason to leave it on given how fast the system will boot back up.

 

[dbcooper1]

Are you on a UPS and if not, how often do you lose power? There's also the issue of number of power on/off cycles although once a day probably won't be an issue.

 

[F1shF4t]

SSD wear for average user is a non issue. Just look here http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm. In fact I use hybrid sleep all the time and my oldest ssd after two years still has only ~8TB of writes.

SSDs using sandforce controllers can have issues with sleep/hibernate. My corsair F115 will BSOD on resume from sleep on every laptop i've tried but works fine on my desktop. So thats something to consider if your ssd is sandforce based, otherwise put it to sleep. Its near instant wake times and will save you on electricity costs.