Computer on or off?

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Hard drives are still affected by power cycling. I've been involved in the actual design of hard drives.... Granted, that was 3 years ago, but still fairly recent.

The issue is the spin-up of the drive, which means you have a power surge through the motor inductance, which means you just shortened the life of that drive.

Things are better than they used to be with hard drives -- most cheap drives are single platter, which means they don't have as much mass to spin. Manufacturers are also controlling the spin-up time to try to reduce the effects. Not all hard drives are built alike: some cheap Western Digitals or Maxtors come with a 90 warranty. The expensive WDs and Seagates come with a 5 year warranty.

Non-moving electronic parts typically don't have an issue with power cycling, but moving parts definitely do.

Side note: For those of you who choose to use the World Community Grid to allow those spare CPU cycles to be used, be aware that it is definitely shortening the life of your computer (every 10 degree C rise in temperature cuts the life in half), and it is also costing you dollars in power bills. A modern computer at idle (screen off) is only drawing about 30 watts. Get those numbers crunching on it, and that easily rises to 100 watts. Turn on the screensaver (graphics card CPU) and that can jump another 50 watts.

Actually, even some non-moving electronic parts have shortend life spans aka flourescent light bulbs. It doesn't mean however they are not to be turned off. Just do not turn them off every 15 minutes. Hard drives are the same thing. If you are not going to use your computer for more than 2 hours, turn it off. I state it is a non issue because turning off your computer 2 or 3 times per day will not effectively curtail its usage factor for the average individual. (Soundguy not included) It will become obsolete long before it breaks down from turning it off. If you've been out of it for 3 years, yes, further advances in hard drive construction have occured and what you'll see coming down the pike shortly will yet make hard drives even stronger. To have business computers not turned off at the end of the day with modern day computers is just a massive energy waste. Back up entities including remote preservation give little excuse for this not happening for fear of lack of boot-up. Updates can be given at specified times and there is software out there that will pass the updates thru upon boot up. I mean we saved $72000 with just 1400 computers being off at night in one years time. Imagine the savings if 5 million or more computers were turned off.
There are many misconceptions out there that people still cling to such as it takes more energy to turn on a light than to keep it on ( only true if yo do not plan for the light to be on for more than 3 seconds) or "why lower the thermostat, it will cost more for the house or building to come back up to temperature". Considering it will only take from 1/2 -1 hours worth of time for the space to be reheated, why leave the heat on for another 8-12 hours or more where the system will be forced to maintain temperature for that much longer. You'll use way more energy doing that than by turning the heat down.
The op did not give reasons for asking the question but if they included longevity concerns of the computer product or energy savings by shut-down, then on either field I would give a wholehearted recommendation of shut down based on my knowledge.

 

[Soundguy]

I'm for sure not shutting my machine down 3-4 times a day... with the time it takes to boot... I'd be forever waiting for those real quick things I need to do that take me 30 seconds.. but having to wait a minute or more for a bootup.. yeah.. well.. the extra 11 cents per KWH is fine by me as a convienience factor.


soundguy

 

[arrow]

I'm for sure not shutting my machine down 3-4 times a day... with the time it takes to boot... I'd be forever waiting for those real quick things I need to do that take me 30 seconds.. but having to wait a minute or more for a bootup.. yeah.. well.. the extra 11 cents per KWH is fine by me as a convienience factor.


soundguy

Hey....I left you out of it The problem occurs with your last sentence. multiply the extra 11 cents by a million and you see what I'm getting at especially where its my money paying for someone else's waste such as state run entities. My dumbass run state has a 350 million dollar short fall. If they did effective shut-downs instead of the business as usual mentalities, they could be saving 50-75 large per week in energy costs. Buildings are lit up like christmas trees all year, heat runs 24/7 with no set back let alone what else they are not shutting off and all these seemingly insigificant to them nickles and dimes are killing me tax wise. You had to get me going......I'm going out skidding stems and get me brain back.

 

[Soundguy]

I took it the OP was asking more about a personal machine.. not a large multi-cpu corp that had hundreds if not thousands of units running.... still.. I think there are alot of wastes that far exceed the computer costs.. I work for a CO that leaves the buildings lamps on at night.. the main room of the building has about (50) 575 or 750w ceiling lamps easy.. by itself.. plus a bunch of other rooms.. I'd hate to pay the power bill for that place..

As for electro- devices and loengevity.. especially electro-mechanical devices.. i still can't help but think that steady state is better than start/stop.

Look at relay's... their contact action is rated in amount of switch cycles.. not amount of uptime their contacts are conduction.. assuming you are running at an amperage level within their 100% duty cycle rated capacity.

soundguy

 

[3RRL]

Nevertheless, in our personal use it still makes sense to turn the computers off when not being used.
First of all, I manage my computer time at the ranch. I'm only on first thing in the morning and then again that evening. There's at least an 8 to 10 hour window in between, so I can't see not turning it off. And I mean off ... everything that's connected to the power strip...off.

You'd be surprised how much energy a computer left on uses. You guys know we are completely off grid so we have a 27.5kW storage capacity in our solar system. We got those Kill-a-Watt meters that you plug in just before the power strip. Let them run for 24 hours and see what it says. In our case each computer draws over 100w. Leave it on for 24 hours and that's 2.4kW. We have 3 computers but mostly use only two of them. So that's still 4.8kW draw per day.

If we're using any other electricity and have used up the battery bank, the generator kicks on which costs money in fuel. On cloudy or rainy days, you go through the kW usage pretty quickly, since there is nothing or very little being put back in. Heck, we even unplug (power strips) our electric tooth brushes or my shaver, etc. everything that doesn't have a clock in it. the electrical savings have gotten us down from our old style of about 28/32kW daily use to under 13kW.
What would that do for YOUR electric bill? Multiply that for a year. It might equate to a new shotgun, rifle or pistol every year?

Since we only turn them on twice a day with a good span of time in between, I don't see it would hurt them much. I probably start my truck or tractor more times than that. It's not like we're turning them on and off every ten minutes. Sure it was an adjustment, but I wish I'd have been more energy conscious years ago!
My 2 cents...

 

[Iplayfarmer]

My work computer us on 24/7. We have a cumbersome network, and it takes a good 3 or 4 minutes to boot on a good day. I will re-boot occasionally just to avoid the memory loss and registry issues as previously mentioned. Additionally, I occasionally need to access my desktop remotely even in the middle of the night.

My home desktop computer is on nearly all the time. It's set to go into standby after about 30 minutes of inactivity. I use it as the network server for my wireless network at home. We'll re-boot it about once a week because it stops working right.

I'm running Vista on my laptop. I only ever turn it on when I'm going to use it, and then I turn it off when I'm done. It gets turned on about once a day. I'm not too familiar with Vista yet, so I'm not sure that it really ever turns off. It sure boots fast, though.

 

[arrow]

I took it the OP was asking more about a personal machine.. not a large multi-cpu corp that had hundreds if not thousands of units running.... still.. I think there are alot of wastes that far exceed the computer costs.. I work for a CO that leaves the buildings lamps on at night.. the main room of the building has about (50) 575 or 750w ceiling lamps easy.. by itself.. plus a bunch of other rooms.. I'd hate to pay the power bill for that place..

As for electro- devices and loengevity.. especially electro-mechanical devices.. i still can't help but think that steady state is better than start/stop.

Look at relay's... their contact action is rated in amount of switch cycles.. not amount of uptime their contacts are conduction.. assuming you are running at an amperage level within their 100% duty cycle rated capacity.

soundguy

One of my buildings has 450 40 watt flourescents. That building has 225 computers. They are relatively small units with a draw of about 150 watts per. If I had to make a choice, I'd leave the lights on and almost save enough shutting down computers to run the lights. Remember what we are talking about. The entity in itself is obsolete almost as it comes out so computers can be shut off without fear of deterioration before their technology life expectancy is up. A relay in itself is only changing a condition from one circuit to another. I wouldn't know how else to give something like that a rating other than function cycles. Its kind of like measuring a tractor usage in miles instead of hours otherwise.
I would not argue your middle point on many electrical devices however we part company on computers relative to their usage longevity ratio and savings to be had by turning them off. Switches and relays are almost always going to go before the mechanicals. I had to replace a soft start contact on a 45 ton RTU four times before I wised up and put a VSD on it. On computers however? different story for me.

On a different note, I am curious as to the wattage strengths of the above lights you mentioned. Even a metal halide say in a average size gymnasium can light the whole place up like daylight with anywhere between 8 and 12 lamps. And these are averaging between 360 to 400 watts. What is being illuminated in your building that needs so many lumens?

 

[Soundguy]

Remember.. I work in a theatrical environment.. lotsa lamps.. I'm not even counting the 'banks' of 1000w parcans that get only about 8hrs of use per day.

lamps and ballast are a realitively easy replacement and individual cost.. not so easy for a computer.. especially if you are not concerned about data loss so much as loss of dedicated service.

I'd opt for banked lamps that turned off 3 out of every 4.. that leaves plenty of light in the building during off time.. but would draw much less KW..

soundguy

 

[MossRoad]

I took it the OP was asking more about a personal machine.. not a large multi-cpu corp that had hundreds if not thousands of units running.... still.. I think there are alot of wastes that far exceed the computer costs.. I work for a CO that leaves the buildings lamps on at night.. the main room of the building has about (50) 575 or 750w ceiling lamps easy.. by itself.. plus a bunch of other rooms.. I'd hate to pay the power bill for that place..

As for electro- devices and loengevity.. especially electro-mechanical devices.. i still can't help but think that steady state is better than start/stop.

Look at relay's... their contact action is rated in amount of switch cycles.. not amount of uptime their contacts are conduction.. assuming you are running at an amperage level within their 100% duty cycle rated capacity.

soundguy

I went around my employer's building and added up the wattage of the lights in the largest rooms in the building. If they would turn the lights off for just 5 hours a day in those rooms (no one here then, anyway) they would save $12,000.00 a year. I got a big thank you and a cool coffee mug.

 

[MossRoad]

There were a few duplicate posts in there. I removed them, if anyone is wondering. M.R.