Save the planet or save my hard disk?

Question

We're being told to stop wasting energy by unplugging appliances when they're not in use etc. But I thought that it was safest to keep my pc on stand-by rather than powering down each time. What's the answer?

Answer 1

save the planet

Answer 2

That used to be the case back when hard drives did not have features built in to "park" them before the power was turned off, and when they were more suseptible to crashing, but as long as you are not just ripping the plug out of the wall, and you shut down by the operating system you would be fine doing it either way. However in standby mode it uses so little power that you are not really wasting anything anyway.

Answer 3

You are going to find that there are two schools of thought on the subject. On one hand certain people believe that turning the computer off completely and then restarting every day is bad for the operating system. I on the other hand believe that you need to turn your system off when you are finished using it for the day. By turning your system off you accomplish two things you stop all of the moving parts from functioning, you also free up random access memory. While you're using your computer your memory modules become fragmented just like your hard drive does, but unlike your hard drive you cannot really defragment your memory. My question to you, is do you car running in the driveway at night while you sleep? I would hope not this would leave your car and easy target or for thieves, the same goes for your computer at night.

Answer 4

Save the hard disk

Answer 5

(Generally) your computer uses up the most power starting up. If you set you screen saver and possibly standby, then you won't be using up much power at all.