PC on or Off? HD concerns

[JackKane]

A situation:
PC runs 12 hours a day non-stop, should it be turned off at the end of the day, or should it run through the night?

i am concerned with HD life, so please, let me know what you think

[Mntsnow]

Jack,

It truely comes down to is there anything that you would gain from leaving them on? As for the "electronics" are concerned you are better off leaving them on...the powering up and down cycles "tend to increase wear"...its hard to prove but thats what they say....I like to think of it like a car engine..the majority of wear is when you start it up. (no oil pressure) thats why over the road semi's get 100's of thousands of miles between engine overhauls. You can set up your computer to spindown the harddrives after so much inactivity to conserve on electricity. I for one leave my systems on 24/7 and have done so since I have owned them. and have never yet had a harddrive fail do to power problems. I ended up joining the SYSOPT RC5 cracking team and am getting some good use out of my systems at night!

Mntsnow

ps. most harddrives now days have aleast 80,000 hours MTBF (mean time between failures) which works out to be 9.132 years before a hard drive would "normally die".

pss In response to the reply below I double checked on one of my drives by seagate http://www.seagate.com/cda/disc/tech/detail/0,1248,87,00.shtml and it lists a MTBF of 400,000 hours!!

[This message has been edited by Mntsnow (edited 09-17-99).]

[This message has been edited by Mntsnow (edited 09-18-99).]

[nilknarf]

If you run the PC that much, I would leave it on. The power usage will probably be negligible and electronics don't like constantly being cycled on and off, this will wear out your HD faster than leaving the system on.

BTW, the average life of a HD is 15-18,000 hours. This means that if your HD is used continuously, it'll last for about 18-24 months (yes, if you calculated it, this is slightly less than the life).

Personally, i've never worried too much about HD life. Why? Because, you usually will replace a HD with a larger one before it fails, and, when a HD does fail, it is usually accompanied by warning signs well in advance. So I wouldn't worry about leaving the system on all the time.

Hope this helps!
Good Luck!