Carl said:
Why does so many people recomend leaveing your PC run 24/7 ?
Three reasons. First, you don't have to wait for the computer to
reboot when you turn it back on. Second, my understanding from a
computer expert who writes XP books -- to whom I asked this very
question a few weeks ago at his blogsite -- is that today's hard
drives are designed to last five years or longer even if left
constantly on. Third, there is no evidence I know of that turning the
machine on or off every day will prolong its useful life. I would
think that, if anything, the opposite is true.
Incidentally, my previous computer was a Dell that I kept constantly
on for the five years that I owned it. I never had a problem with it,
and even today it still runs like a champ for my niece (to whom I gave
it when I bought my new machine).
It sure seams to me it would be like any other tool, when not in use shut it
off.
Not necessarily.
Seams like it would last a lot longer.
Not necessarily. Probably not even true.
You surly don't leave your automobile running 24/7 just so you don't have
restart it when you want to use it.
Computers are not cars.
Just don't don't make sense to me.
Maybe someone can try and educate me more.
Hope this helps. Let me add a few more comments. First, a computer
that is constantly on will outperform a computer that is constantly
turned on or off. The reason has to do with the system cache, which
is part of Windows memory management. When you boot up a computer,
code is initially loaded from your slow hard drive into your blazing
fast RAM. From that point on, it stays in RAM (even when you close
the program or file) until another application or file that you opened
more recently needs the memory. As long as the original code remains
in RAM -- and the more RAM you have, the longer it will stay there --
the faster it will execute or load the next time you use it. When you
shut down the computer, however, everything in blazing fast RAM is
lost, meaning that you once again have to load files from the much
slower hard drive when you later turn the computer back on and it
reboots.
The only time you need to shut down or reboot your computer is when
installing and uninstalling hardware or hardware drivers, installing
or uninstalling software and updates, when you need to run chkdsk on
the system drive, and when your system becomes unstable and cannot be
restored through lesser means than a reboot.
Second, if you leave your computer constantly on, XP and your other
software can be configured to do the "cleaning the sock drawer" tasks
in the middle of the night, such as updating your software, checking
Windows Update, or scanning your machines for malware.
Last, if you are concerned about power consumption, try using the
hibernate function as an alternative to shutting down. Even here a
computer will wake up faster from hibernation than it will from a
reboot, especially a cold reboot. And it may even be the case that
all the files that were in RAM prior to hibernation will be loaded
back into RAM, meaning that you don't take a performance hit, either.
Ken
