Should the computer be turned off when not in use?

Question

In a Blog someone pointed out the light bulb always dies when you first turn it on. Does this phenomenon apply to hard drives?

Answer 1

This reminds me of the urban legend from 20 years ago that said every time you turn on a light bulb it costs 10 cents. I hear the light bulb dying one too.

Yes, turn the computer off when not in use. Otherwise the only people benefiting are the power companies getting to charge you for the added electricity. Chances are your computer will long become technologically obsolete well before the components die.

Hard drives have a motor to spin the platters (substrate) and an actuator that controls the read write heads. As will all motors, the life is limited to a certain number of hours. You only waste away the life span by leaving that motor on to spin while you are not using it.

I have some incredibly old 1GB and 8GB drives that still work, and they were powered up and shutdown everyday for years. While they continue to work fine, they are useless to me now.

Also, by leaving your computer on 24/7 you risk hacking and spy ware especially on Windows systems.

Answer 2

Well, your computer components are usually under the most stress when they are first started up. This could sometimes be a big issue with older computers, but with modern computers, the wear and tear and stress from heat and power fluxuations when turning a computer off and on really isn't that big of a deal.

You should be more concerned with wasted power and/or wasting the life of the hard drive.

Do you need your computer on constantly because of work you're doing? If not, then it's probably a good idea to just turn it off and save yourself a few bucks on electricity.

Also, a hard drive has only a limited lifetime. If you just have the computer on but aren't really using it most of the time, you're needlessly letting the hard drive get that much closer to death. Although again, this isn't really a huge issue nowadays. Most people end up upgrading hard drives before their old ones ever die, even if the hard drive was in use constantly.

Answer 3

The light bulb thing, yes, probably 98% light bulbs burn out when you turn it on, but I have had lightbulbs burn out when they are in use. Also, hard drives don't "burn out" They need to be destroyed by something, such as a bad power supply, or a huge surge of energy, and throwing it against a wall or in a fire might help to.

But not turning your computer off? NO, that won't help, if something is going to happen it just is. That's why there are backup programs and features for hard drives or you keep really important data on something extra. I almost never turn my computer off, I just put it on stand by / sleep when I go to bed or I'm not using it. Works fine for me! I have had no problems. It is being put on sleep / waking up a lot but no problems.

Answer 4

No. Its comparing apples to oranges. The greatest damage to a computer occurs when you turn on the computer, after the computer has been turned off for a long period of time. This is referred to as a "cold start." Why? When the computer is turned off, there is no electricity to the motherboard and other components. The motherboard and the CPU are at room temperature. Turn the computer on and the electricity flows through the motherboard heating it up. This constant heating up and cooling down stresses the motherboard and the CPU. In the morning, you should turn on computer and leave it on. When you are finished for the day, turn it off.

Answer 5

in case you're trying to tutor off your computer and it hangs then you definately have softwares nonetheless operating contained in the history, in many situations window immediately shutsdown any softwares yet there are those that typically look to no longer reply to nicely to living house windows command, a range of of the time those softwares tend to be anti virus classes or anti spywares like Webroots, attempt to close all classes on your gadget before turning off the the computer which contain spysweepers, msn, norton etc etc

Answer 6

Ahaan... especially if you are using a notebook pc (most desktops are pretty rugged and can run for days without really heating up) - keeping it running all the time will obviously heat it up besides consuming energy. Turn it off especially if you are not gonna use it for a while... for shorter durations - you can use the hibernate feature in the notebook.

HTH.

Answer 7

I leave mine on standbye and turn off the screen

Answer 8

yes turn it off and switch off power and unplug it

Answer 9

you should at least turn it off when you go to bed

Answer 10

i'm not sure, but it would be nice to conserve a little energy wherever possible.