Re: Shutting down lessens computer life............
On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 07:41:48AM +1100, Charlie wrote:
>
> On Mon, 9 Dec 2013 15:27:15 +0100 Gian Uberto Lauri sent:
>
> > I know that shutting down the machine saves electricity, but heating
> > and cooling is the mechanical stress that hits the non-moving
> > components of your computer, computer that turn off less often live
> > longer.
>
> I wonder if the above is right? I've seen it written somewhere
> before? Maybe it only applies for desktops?
>
I think it depends very much on power supplies and the vintage of the
motherboard.
Inrush current from mains to the capacitors in your PSU / switching
transistors as you switch on and the kick of current as you turn off
_WILL_ damage PSU components to some extent. Likewise, fans spinning up/
spinning down get more wear on the bearings than when spinning at constant
speed but it's really wear and tear on hard drives that will take its toll
For many years, the received wisdom was that you kept disks spinning as long
as they'd run - speeding up, slowing down kills the drive heads
If you've two old laptops that have lasted many years they are probably
on the extreme end of the reliability curve - most well used laptops die
within five years, usually because hinges go, displays fail as connecting
ribbon cables fail - you've done well :)
Some fo the traditional advice is no longer true in this era of purpose
made laptop drives / SSDs / better quality PSUs. Having said that, I'm
quite happy to keep servers running for a year with small numbers of reboots
- a large disk shelf array with >16TB of disks really doesn't like being spun down
and brought back up and the likelihood of an individual drive failing increases
with every power cycle ... horses for courses
> I have old two laptops, one used as a desktop for 7 years, and the other
> the same for 6 years and 1 year as casual mobile use. Being on solar
> power, switch the laptops on and off several, no, many times a day.
>
> Both these are switched off sometimes after only 15 minutes powered up,
> depending on the charge in the solar batteries. But mostly on for at
> least 8 hours in 24, but switched on and off no less than 6 times
> during that period.
>
> 7 years is not a long life for a laptop, I have heard of others that
> are still working after 10 years on this list I think. They keyboards
> on my laptops are pretty worn and they each only have 512 MB RAM but
> otherwise work as when new but now running Debian Jessie. They are since
> a couple of weeks now, just for casual use.
>
> But this new laptop used as a desktop is also switched on and off many
> times a day or night. I suppose it doesn't matter if the machines do
> degrade more quickly if turned on and off often. I have no choice in
> the matter. But it would be interesting to know just the same.
>
All the best,
AndyC
> Charlie
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