QOTD: Do You Shut Off Your PC At Night?

[cpos]

no, I'm folding

 

[joefriday]

Hello, I saw a comment that said the mechanical wear and tear is negligible if you turn off your PC every night. Well, from my experience I think it's not. I've been using computers for more than 15 years and I haven't turned off my PCs in the last 10 years... I can tell you that I've NEVER lost a hard drive. A lot of my friends have lost their hard drives and they all turn off their PCs every day, I guess that means something.

Anecdotal evidence for the loss.

 

[tpi2007]

[citation][nom]joefriday[/nom]Anecdotal evidence for the loss.[/citation]

I was going to post a comment and incidentally it is to counter what Feed wrote.

I have a 1994 Compaq Presario CDS 720 Desktop with a Conner Peripherals 420 Megabyte Hard Disk. I bought it in March 1995, and have used it until 2001 without interruption, but turning it off every day. Then my mother used it from 2002 until 2006 (to write texts only), and turning it off too.

The last time I turned it on, the disk was fine. A week ago, after two years without turning it on, I took it out, connected it directly to my current PC, and transferred some data I had forgotten to back then. The disk was immediately recognized by windows xp, I managed to copy what I wanted, and I even went on to clone the hard disk to another. Without a single glitch!

So, turning equipment on and off every day from 1995 to 2001 and then from 2002 to 2006 is an astounding 12 years! And yes, the computer as a whole is still working!

I only changed the hardisk, because I installed Windows 98SE on it and a couple more programs, and 420 Megabytes wouldn't do it! The computer is now running Windows 98SE, connected to my broadband router via a Linksys 10Mbps ISA Ethernet card, using IE 6 SP1, the latest Opera, Messenger 5 (the last version that works on non Pentium machines - I have a beautiful Cyrix 100 Mhz 5x86 running in it), mIRC, and lots of DOS games running without emulators!

So each case is a case!

 

[powerbaselx]

Answering the question, i do shut off the PC at night except if a download under progress that i want to complete faster. But the majority of the days, i shut off the PC at night, of course.

 

[guhland]

Everyday. Once on, the desktops (1-4) are on all day, but are shut off everynight. The notebooks (1-2 depending on whether daughter is home from college) are a little less predictable, but are also off everynight.

 

[TimeWarrior]

My desktop is only ever on when I'm playing games. I use my laptop to do everything else and put it to sleep when I'm not using it. I agree with the post above that the energy savings probably just about outweigh the small chance that something might fail, especially if you buy good gear in the first place.

 

[boonality]

My wife's stays on 24/7 because she is not in the habit of turning a computer off. Mine gets turned off during the week every night and runs all weekend. I've had 1 hard drive failure and 1 power supply failure in 16 years and 7 computers.

 

[llemm]

neon neophyte

24/7. All 3 computers.

Now, as demonstrated previously, the hippies can go ahead and vote me down.


as the earth go older more people becomes more insensitive. they live as everything is made for them. The Electricity we are using is not infinite and the more we use it without care the more we kill our mother earth. Please use more wisely though you People living there in US and other rich country have the money to waste you still have to make your contributions. By saving energy no matter how small it is.

Though I sound like a hippie. I am telling the truth.

 

[Guest]

Yes it's always running 24/7-365. Constantly downloading/uploading to my 6 hard drives. 4 in 2 raid 0 arrays. 2 high-end video cards (sli) 7 fans to cool it all and all protected by a 1.2KW ups connected to a larger battery bank. I love it! AND GUESS WHAT! I measured power consumption with an amp/watt meter and it only consumes 185watts idle/ downloading and 270watts while gaming for maby 2 hrs a day! Now thats not all that much on my hydro bill. I measured actual ac power consumption of your average pc (dell,hp and homebrew ) and they only use between 130-160watts of power.and 20-50watts for LCD realy not alot
there are alot of other ways to save power here. AND I have never had a hard drive fail once in 2 years I had this system. compared to other ppl who always shutdown there computer at say theve had hard drive break downs. I also save on gas heating, this computer keeps my room a few degrees warmer on average : ) So for me it all evens out.
FACT:! a power supply rated say, 1000watts or 500watts IS NOT the power it consumes while the computer is running!! it is a measure of watts/amps on the output side +12v+5v+3.3v that the pc power supply is capable of putting out. Go to hardware store and purchase a 25$ consumer power meter that plugs into any outlet and lets you measure what it consumes in watts. You will be very surprised!!

 

[hillarymakesmecry]

I've actually measured my power consumption with a kill a watt meter and it's similar to what Synchro2012 is saying. 150 watts idle to 250 watts under load. I turn my computer off all the time and conserve as much as possible. My average electricity bill is between $15 and $50 depending on the month of the year. The last one was $35 b/c of space heaters. (It's more efficient that running my furnace for the whole house. If I can save $20 a month turning my computer off while I'm at work I'd be a fool not to.

 

[Guest]

Yes, I do turn off my pc`s.

 

[Fadamor]

Mine stays on, but not because of trying to minimize wear and tear. Mine stays on 24/7 because I'm part of Stanford University's Folding@Home project (http://folding.stanford.edu). I provide the use of my computer for protein folding computations throughout the day and night.

 

[czar1020]

I turn it off at night, it damn things dies so be. Reason to get a new comp.

 

[aknight]

Can't justify leaving computer on just for distributed computing projects. Power transmission uses too much energy. It is better to have a cluster to do such computations. Do folding@home in the background while computer is on anyway (yes uses more than idle) but multitasking compensates for transmission inefficiencies and is the idea of the project.

 

[rosskey711]

No! KEEP UR PC's ON! DON'T TURN THEM OFF CONSUME ALL THE POWER YOU DESIRE!

 

[Guest]

Assuming turning off your computer at night did noticeably decreased a hard drives lifespan, the money saved in power usage would allow you to buy a new one three times over.
Also, even if you´re not worried about cost, your average windows OS needs a reboot and a kick up the arse at least once a day to keep things bearable.

 

[chuckm441]

I turn mine off for several reasons: first, Windows (all versions) often seem to get corrupted if it's left running all the time (and sudden power downs from blackouts and brownouts contribute to this); second, I don't like (trust) Windows sleep states and I don't want to leave my hard drive running (motors, spindles, servos, bearings all wear out); third, I save money on electricity; fourth, I would rather lose my motherboard and cpu than my hard drive.

 

[bruhthakuga]

Sort of? I like the feature of AVG that shut down the PC after scanning. Because it take so long and so much of PC resources to scan that it's like getting a spinal tap, very not desirable. I update my antivirus, which I think should be an option to be automatically before each scan, I block all internet traffic with my firewall then do a full scan, then set it to shut down and set it to force shut down then to bed. Cool.