To leave PC on all the time...

[Guest]

Do you just leave it set as a office/home PC in the power settings or do you set it as always on so it cuts off the monitor and HDs at specified time? I ask because I just read a long post about this from about 2 months ago (I think it was page 50-55) and nobody said anything about this.

 

[yoda271828]

My computers are set to 'Always On' and turn the monitor off after 15 min. I found that turning the HD off sometimes crashed the computers.

 

[Arrow]

I set my computer to never go into standby. As for the monitor, it's at 15minutes. It's not healthy for your hard drive to have it spin up and down all the time; that will ruin its lifespan.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048" target="_new">http://www.ncix.com/shop/index.cfm?affiliateid=319048</A></b>

 

[Grizely1]

i shut it off at about midnight and turn it on at about 7:30AM every day.

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"648kb is all the space anyone will ever need!"

Bill Gates, 1980s

 

[Draenok]

I think there are two schools of thought on this. One is saving power kinda people. That is basically self explanatory. The other is the if you shut off your HDD the heads may crash. This deserves a little explanation then you can make the call on your own.
When your machine shuts off the read/write heads drive all the way in to the center of the disk (which is the last set of sectors) and then literally land. If you abruptly lose power (just in case you want to know) they do not just flop down where they are. There is a capacitor that stores enough power to drive them in to the landing sectors. Now this WILL scratch up your final and last (and smallest sectors) but who cares really, you will lose some K of your HDD which you will never notice because scandisk will just mark and remove them eventually.
So what is the real answer? I just shut off my monitor and let the HDD spin. The monitor being off cuts your machines power comsumption by a TON (although not down to nothing) and I reboot my machine about every 3 or 4 days.
What YOU do is up to you. Both sides actually have valid points, so you make the call.

 

[mwgorecki]

I agree with Draenok - turn off the monitor and let the drives spin. But I do have it set as always on in Win98SE somewhere....

sz

 

[alphateam]

Your HDD is the only mechanical part in your machine, and starting and stopping a machine does wear it out. Just have your monitor shut off after 15-20 mins and you should be cool.

-Alpha
Sorry I missed church, I've been busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.

 

[spud]

Its hard on a drive if it cant spin down completely before it respins up bad sectors love when that happens because the heads dont pull back in time. Newer drives have failsafes for that now but its still hard on the drive.

SPUD

<font color=blue>Just some advice from your friendly neighborhood blue man </font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

All 3 of our PC's are almost always on, since SETI@HOME started. No problems.

Display off after 15 Mins
Drives after 30.

Use CPUidle or such, to save power.

Motor and Spindle Bearings will wear less if the drives are stopped.


"I THINK I USED TO KNOW THAT"

 

[dhlucke]

Unfortionately I live in California, and we don't have any electricity here, so the computer can only be on for as long as my little hamster has the energy to run on the wheel. See right now I'm writing this without the monitor on to save energy. I turn the computer off when I'm not using it. That's the bottom line. Just turn it off when you don't use it.

You might think I'm joking, but my electricy bill has jumped between 100%-300% since last summer. Our damn Governor is a freakin idiot!

<font color=red>Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.</font color=red>
Pablo Picasso

 

[machow]

I use the sleep button on the keyboard once everyday and since it takes Windows 2000 quite long to boot, I rather let it take a nap than sleep. I do not think it does very much damage to mh HDD since I have been doing that for a year with no problems at all. Saving the monitor is useful too since mine consume like 100W max and 5W when sleeping. Plus dual monitors... be green to the Earth.

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