Leaving computer on/off- re: hard drive failure.

Hi, I was just wondering about this.

If you leave your computer on all the time, vs. turning it off at night, could you expect your HD to fail at a faster rate than if you turned it off when not in use?

Because your HD is spinning all the time when the computer's running, right? 7200 rpm is kind of hard to stop and start on a dime, no? So if you leave your computer on all the time, that's like around 33% more usage, right? Roughly 8 hours out of every 24?

What do you all say?

Thanks.

 

Early hard drives took most of their wear from starting and stopping, and cutting power to a spinning drive, rather than shutting down properly, could drop the heads onto the recording surface, physically digging out chunks of your data. Back then, leaving them ON all the time was better for the life of the drive. And that reputation hung on long after it was no longer true.

Modern drives don't suffer from either of those problems, so turning them on/off is no longer a wear issue. I haven't heard any hard data (no pun intended) on newer drives, but I suspect turning them off when not needed for LONG periods is better.

But the drives are not the first things to worry about. Spinning fans, particularly on your video cards or in your power supply (which may be difficult or impossible to replace), are more likely to fail than hard drives, followed by optical drives.

I don't shut my computer down if I'm only going to be away for an hour or two, but I definitely shut it down when I'm done with it for the day.

 

If you choose to let your desktop computer run 24/7, i would advise to have it on an uninterruptable power supply (UPS), preferably one that is 600 to 1000 VA. Most come with a USB cable and software to run on the PC to monitor the status of the UPS and the power to the UPS.

Notebooks should not be left on 24/7 however. The issue with a notebook is that the LCD screen's light sources will dim and wear out. If you have an LCD screen for your desktop, be sure to use a screensaver and the power-saving option to "turn off monitor after several minutes of non-use. The light sources for an LCD monitor are several small fluorescing tubes, they will dim and eventually burn out. Even if you use a screen saver, you should have the screen power-off after not more than an hour of non-use.
This will protect the monitor's life.

Regards.....