REMOVE THE Can of said:
Slightly OT but --
A7N8X-E with two Maxtor hard drives.
I believe that stress on the CPU and MB is greatest in the startup
mode and that leaving the system on is the best way to extend the life
of both. My old system was being started and shutdown several times a
day, so this is a change of mind from what I had been doing.
The other concern I have is the life of the hard drives. Under Power
Options (Win98SE) I elect to shut down after two hours of no use. My
assumption is that spinning drives wear faster than when "shutdown."
I am not very knowledgeable about these matters. Perhaps someone
might provide some enlightening comments?
Ted
There are a number of issues to consider, and without numbers to
back them up, there isn't a simple answer. Take all of this as
pure conjecture.
Of the non-moving parts, electrolytic capacitors are the weakest
link. There are some in the PS and some next to the processor.
They have a life expectancy of 10 years under idea conditions,
and less when they get hot. The ones in the PS are the most
likely to let go, as many PS are designed to run hot, in an
attempt to keep fan noise down. So, maybe somewhere in the 5
to 10 year range.
Other electronic components are subject to mechanical stress. As
the case temp rises and falls, there are stresses pulling on the
silicon die or on the solder joints, because the materials used
expand at different rates. The big chips on the board have a
solder joint life of 10 years or more. Again, a negligible issue.
Moving parts are by far the least reliable. The case and CPU fans
would have a life expectancy of 3 years for quality components,
much less for the cheapest sleeve bearing fans.
The disk drive has a couple of weak areas. The way that the heads
land when the disk is shut off, involves some parts rubbing together,
and that cannot be good. Most disks now have a standard rating of
50,000 start/stop cycles (you can look that up), so from that, you
can figure out how much spinning down of the disks you can afford.
The bearings also wear, and there is no reason to expect the wear
characteristic will be any different than with the fans. AFAIK,
even a drive with fluid bearings, has fluid on only one bearing and
not both. Otherwise, if both bearings were fluid stabilized, wear
would be negligible. (When the head is "flying", there is no wear
on the head or the surface it is flying over.)
So, I would make my decision on how to operate the computer,
based on what is best for the disk drive. Other parts of the
computer count too, but the disk is going to fail first. At
least for today's high density disks. Some of the old drives
of around 2GB or so, could operate for up to seven years,
before they could no longer be coaxed to spin up. So, compare
the wear on the bearings and how many years of that you estimate
they can take, versus how many start stop cycles the disk can
really take. It is really a tossup, with no simple answer.
(I bet buried in some big company, is a fine document with all the
stats needed to make this decision. Good luck gaining access to
that info.)
HTH,
Paul
