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Thoran · 03-07-2005, 10:37 AM

On or off depends on how often you use the system and what it's used for, and different system components have different tendencies I think.

Power supplies tend to die quicker if they're left on full time.

Motherboards tend to die on powerup, so they may not like geting turned on and off.

Hard drives tend to die of old age (3 to 5 years typically), I think it's read and write activity that does them in, not powerup (just my opinion).

CRT Monitors die of all sorts of maladies, but often it's the High frequency supply, and often that goes on powerup... but IMO they shouldn't be left on due to cost, you could buy another crt for the amount of electricity it'd cost to leave yours on full time.

LCD Monitors... I dunno, have yet to kill one (and I've got 4... nice reliability there).

More on Disk Drives:

My Home domain server/file server is on 24/7, however... it has no monitor or keyboard and the drive array spins down after 2 hours of inactivity. It's been running this way since I got it (3 years or so) and I just had my first hdd failure on that box. It just got a bran-spankin new terrabyte raid array... it's also set to spin down, that array is for media (DVD's, MP3's, Pictures), and it is not used frequently.

Using the windows "hdd shut down" feature isn't necessarily bad, it depends on how often your drive is getting hit. And the reason not to use it is more annoyance of waiting for spin-up than anything else imo. If it's a drive that's only occasionally used, spin it down and live with the slight delay. set the waiting period to a couple hours so it's not going up and down too frequently and you won't have a problem, most HDD's fail from read/write (surface) failure not mechanicals or electricals.

All the desktops in my house are shut down every night, PC's cost money to run, and any reduction in component life is likely more than balanced by savings in energy bills.

03-07-2005, 10:37 AM	#21
Thoran Galvatron Join Date: January 10, 2002 Location: Upstate NY Age: 57 Posts: 2,109	On or off depends on how often you use the system and what it's used for, and different system components have different tendencies I think. Power supplies tend to die quicker if they're left on full time. Motherboards tend to die on powerup, so they may not like geting turned on and off. Hard drives tend to die of old age (3 to 5 years typically), I think it's read and write activity that does them in, not powerup (just my opinion). CRT Monitors die of all sorts of maladies, but often it's the High frequency supply, and often that goes on powerup... but IMO they shouldn't be left on due to cost, you could buy another crt for the amount of electricity it'd cost to leave yours on full time. LCD Monitors... I dunno, have yet to kill one (and I've got 4... nice reliability there). More on Disk Drives: My Home domain server/file server is on 24/7, however... it has no monitor or keyboard and the drive array spins down after 2 hours of inactivity. It's been running this way since I got it (3 years or so) and I just had my first hdd failure on that box. It just got a bran-spankin new terrabyte raid array... it's also set to spin down, that array is for media (DVD's, MP3's, Pictures), and it is not used frequently. Using the windows "hdd shut down" feature isn't necessarily bad, it depends on how often your drive is getting hit. And the reason not to use it is more annoyance of waiting for spin-up than anything else imo. If it's a drive that's only occasionally used, spin it down and live with the slight delay. set the waiting period to a couple hours so it's not going up and down too frequently and you won't have a problem, most HDD's fail from read/write (surface) failure not mechanicals or electricals. All the desktops in my house are shut down every night, PC's cost money to run, and any reduction in component life is likely more than balanced by savings in energy bills.