On all the time or off every night?

[Steve Brame]

I used to be a Support Analyst for the IT division of a large metropolitan hospital. Our policy was to shut down non-essential computers during off-hours. I maintain that regimen here in our post house. The components most likely to fail due to ‘hours run’ are the hard drives. They are also the most critical components, especially if you do not maintain a regular backup. The less a hard drive is spinning, the longer it may live before failure.

Computers use quite a bit of energy when running – not only their own, but in your air conditioning as well, especially a high powered editing machine. They generate a lot of heat. There may be an argument that in a cold climate, they may actually save in heating costs.

To add to any confusion, it’s always been said that the most ‘wear and tear’ on a hard drive occurs at cold startup, so the case has also been made that leaving one spinning perpetually may actually lengthen it’s life.

Asus P6X58D Premium * Core i7 950 * 24GB RAM * nVidia Quadro 4000 * Windows 7 Premium 64bit * System Drive – WD Caviar Black 500GB * 2nd Drive(Pagefile, Previews) – WD Velociraptor 10K drive 600GB * Media Drive – 2TB RAID0 (4 – WD Caviar Black 500GB drive) * Matrox MX02 Mini * Adobe CC
——————————————-
“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Kent Beeson]

Thanks for thoughts

So that’s what I mean … The confusion is about wear/tear on hard drives off and on, over possible issues by virtue of leaving everything on til it drops dead

Still not sure which is best…maybe the question is which is the least bad to do?

[Steve Brame]

And I would imagine that without extensive studies involving many, many variables, the answer may reside in a coin toss, or at the very least, a gut feeling.

Asus P6X58D Premium * Core i7 950 * 24GB RAM * nVidia Quadro 4000 * Windows 7 Premium 64bit * System Drive – WD Caviar Black 500GB * 2nd Drive(Pagefile, Previews) – WD Velociraptor 10K drive 600GB * Media Drive – 2TB RAID0 (4 – WD Caviar Black 500GB drive) * Matrox MX02 Mini * Adobe CC
——————————————-
“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Yair Bartal]

I have two computers on a LAN which are on 24/7.
One advantage: backups are scheduled for each computer plus a copy of one’s backup to the other via the LAN automatically each night.

[Jp Pelc]

I guess like Steve said this is more of a gut feeling then based on scientific research, but I don’t see how it can be a beneficial to leave all machines running nonstop for months at a time. I shut down every night unless I have an overnight render happening

[Jeff Pulera]

I don’t know how Macs operate, but there is a SLEEP option on PCs that basically shuts everything down – drives spin down, fans turn off, lights go out…computer is OFF for all intents and purposes, yet touching the mouse or power button fires everything up in a few seconds from that sleep state, quite different from a cold start – all open programs/projects are still there ready to go. Might be an option for you if Mac has similar functionality.

From personal experience with drives going bad, it has ALWAYS been during a bootup – they never quit while the computer is running, so there may be something to that logic of keeping them spinning. Makes sense if you think about it, with thermal expansion and all that happening. Kind of like truck drivers that leave the rig idling and never shut it down.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Walter Soyka]

I leave computers and hard drives running, for three reasons:

1) I can remote in any time that I need to. Who wants to go into the office just because something is turned off?

2) Cloud backup, like Yair mentioned. Big files take a long time to upload!

3) Thermal expansion, as Jeff mentioned. When you turn your computer on, it heats up over a few minutes to its operating temperature. As components heat, they expand. When you turn it off, components cools to room temperature. As they cool, they contract. This physical stress is greater than actually operating the electronics.

The downside is, of course, energy usage.

I do specifically turn my monitors off every night. I see no sense in sucking up one-half to two-thirds of the usable lives of their illumination sources, so I take my chances with any thermal expansion issues.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Kent Beeson]

Thanks everyone for helpful replies – so is this what I should do, and just leave everything on but LG 34″ monitor?
Sounds like that’s what most suggest(?)

[Chris Borjis]

I have all 5 of our mac systems set for the power management & sleep disabled.

Having it on can hinder performance. “Green modes” can make the cpus
not get to full speed.

The Pro-Tools installation manual specifically states that
a machine going to sleep while a project is open can muck
things up. I’ve seen it happen.

We generally power down our macs at night, unless renders
or audio mixes are being processed.

[Kent Beeson]

Over two forums worth of input now do I have (CC and Apple’s)…it seems about 50% say yes, 50% say no…

So, I left it all in sleep mode last night, and might do it like this: every other day or so shut down totally, every other day leave on sleep…wonder if that’s a compromising solution re: possible wear and tear(?) Don’t know.