Is it bad to turn computers on and off often?or to keep it running without turning of

[silvercats]

Is it bad to turn computers on and off often?or to keep it running without turning off?

Please provide reasons for your answers.Technical terms are good.Answer onllyyyy if you you really know,
Thanks!

[rubberman]

It is best to leave workstations and servers running, unless you are going to leave them just idling for extended periods of time. IE; turn off the workstation when going away for the weekend. Servers should probably not be powered down except for maintenance. In any case, power-up is the most stressful on system components. If you do leave your system on for extended periods of time, monitor component temperature. I left my workstation on when going away one weekend, and when I got back I found that the fan on one of my external disc arrays had failed, cooking the drives and my data as a result... sigh. Since I keep temperature monitoring software running, I would have noticed were I around that the drives were getting "toasty" before they failed, and could have fixed the situation. So the lesson there is - going away for more than a day, then shut down the system unless I need to access it remotely (via VPN).

[jingda]

It really depends how long you are not using your computer. If you do not want to use it for around a few minutes to 2 hours, it is best to let the laptop to sleep. Turning it off and on will only damage the laptop. But if you do not want to use your laptop for a few days, it is best to turn it off. LEaving it on will shorten the battery lifespan. You can also hibernate your computer if you want to.

[silvercats]

yeah but hibernation is equal to shutting down ,right?because current is not flowing through it anymore as in shut down

[jingda]

Well hibernation is actually just putting your laptop into a sleep mode but a bit different. When you wake your computer up from a hibernation, everything is the same you last use it. Example you last use IE9 and have 3 tabs open. When you hibernate it, nothing change. Thus when you use your computer again everything will be the same, with 3 tabs in IE9. Shut down is closing all running application thus nothing will be the same when you use your laptop again.

[rubberman]

The original post wasn't clear as to whether they were talking about laptops or desktop/server systems. Laptops are generally configured to sleep/hibernate when they are on battery power after some period in order to conserve battery. Workstations can also be configured to hibernate similarly, or on demand, and that does allow you to restart the system in the same context that it was in when hibernated. It does shut down the machine, but saves the context in a hibernation file, and when restarted, reads the hibernation file and restores the system to that context. Sleep is different in that the machine is still powered up enough to keep memory, stack, etc. running enough to save the system context. On a laptop on battery power, the battery will eventually run down, unlike hibernation which actually physically shuts off the system.

[silvercats]

thank you both for answers.My original question was is it bad to shutdown laptops/desktops often ?because some says it is not good for machines to cool down and warm up often.what do you think about that?I would like if you can give the reasons in technical terms

[jingda]

I suspect it was a laptop because this was post in the PC hardware forum. That means it must be a laptop or desktop computer. But nice answer rubberman, you are an expert.

@ silvercats

You are welcome. What do you mean by technical terms?

[silvercats]

i mean by technical terms,if it is bad for the mother board,it is because heat cause metal connectors to contact again (i am not sure if this is correct,just an example ) ,like rubberman's explanation on hibernation(about context saving etc..) ,like that technically. theoretically ?using technical reasons and words ...like so

[silvercats]

some says keeping a desktop PC /laptops for a long time,is good for mother board and bad for hard disks .because of cooling uo and down due to turning off often ,mother board and component will fail.Is that true ,can any one tell what is happening from the inside of these devices if so.
Thanks

[rubberman]

Modern operating systems can monitor a number of components on the computer that have thermal sensors. For example, on my Scientific Linux 6 (a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6) system, I can monitor the temperature of each CPU core (all 8), each memory stick, and all my hard drives. The CPUs and RAM have hardware sensors that the OS can access, and the disc drives all have what is called SMART technology on the disc controllers that monitor a lot of items such as temperature, number of bad sectors that have been remapped with good ones, number of read/write errors, number of times the drive has been started/stopped, how long it has been powered on (total), etc. With the appropriate monitoring software, your system can tell you exactly what is going on. For example, I had an overheating memory stick last year that would start to flake out under load, such as when I would build a new kernel. I was able to fix that by changing the slots the memory was in to get better air flow, and the problem has gone away since I was able to reduce the temperature by about 25 degrees C under load. It would start to fail at 105C, and now I can keep it around 80C under load. Without the monitoring software to see exactly what was going on, I would not have known what to do, other than replace all the memory (8GB in 4 sticks).

As for Windows monitoring tools, you may need to do some Google searches to find out what is out there, but it should be available, at least for Win7 and Windows server operating systems.

[silvercats]

you rubber man,you have switched the threads i guess lol.anyway,
what are the maximum heat for components? RAM,Hard,CPU,Chip and GPU ?
thanks

[rubberman]

you rubber man,you have switched the threads i guess lol.anyway,
what are the maximum heat for components? RAM,Hard,CPU,Chip and GPU ?
thanks

Well, the thread was about whether to leave a system on, or shut it off more or less frequently. I thought some info about monitoring system health would be in order so people can determine whether or not running continuously may or may not be a good idea. If after leaving it one for an extended period and things start to overheat, then shut it down. If things "keep their cool", then don't bother. Starting/stopping drives is harder on them than running continuously, unless they are overheating because of inadequate air flow.

As for proper temperatures, it depends. My cores run between 20C and 50C or so. My RAM runs between 60C and 80C. My drives vary, depending upon where they are installed and what make/model they are. My 1.5TB Seagate drives run hot, up to about about 44C in a vertical dock (ambient air flow - no fan). They start to complain above 45C. My internal 500GB Seagate drives run about 25C. My 2TB WD drives in a RAID enclosure run about 32C. And my 1.5TB Seagate drives in a similar enclosure run about 40C or so.

[caperjack]

this is not technical terms ,just my opinion based on how i do it and othere in my house ,bought my first computer in 1996,not sure how many different one i have owned over the years ,but never hurt any of them by shutting them down 5 or 6 times a day or by leaving them on for 24/7 for a month or more.

i have been building and fixing computers since 1999,and people i service computer for do it both ways ,and those who leave them on all the time have had dead motherboard and harddrive as well as those who leave them on all the time,speaking of time ,time for another beer ,good night and good luck

[jingda]

Lol. Actually to explain why one should not turn computers off and on all the time in technical terms is difficult. We are so use to explain it with our own experience.

[silvercats]

So the conclusion is it is neither good or bad to keep it on or turn of often ,right ? lol

[jingda]

So the conclusion is it is neither good or bad to keep it on or turn of often ,right ? lol

Yup. :)

[caperjack]

So the conclusion is it is neither good or bad to keep it on or turn of often ,right ? lol

the only time i can think it would be good idea to leave computer on 24/7 is in a cold environment,because of something called thermal shock ,that is when the motherboard is very cold from sitting all night and the quick heat up of the cpu can cause the thermal shock to the motherboard,just something i remember reading a bunch of years back