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To Leave On or Off?

I have asked similiar questions like this before: Do you leave your computer on? Do you leave your speakers on? Now I am asking one more: Do you leave your external drive on? I have a Maxtor 160GB external drive that I use "In Case Shit........" Thus far I have only plugged in the power as I wanted to back things up. When I told a friend about this he said I might damage the harddrive (long-term; plugging and unplugging it) and that most external drives are designed to run 24/7. Is he right? If I leave the drive on for extended periods it does get hot (I have it standing on its side in a base that Maxtor provided [is it better for it to be on its side or laying flat I guess is another question]) and it makes a low hum which I find annoying. But I don't want to lose all the information stored on computer so if I have to put with hum, so be it. So, do I leave this drive on continously or not? Much obliged for any hints, tips, suggestions, etc. Thanks

most modern equipment, os's do have a higher wear and tearn on startup than if they were just idling, how much it can affect the overall life is questionable.

tends to be power supplies and switches that get the most stress.

My policy is to leave things I use every day on 24/7. That's 3 of my computers out of 9. For things I don't use every day, if they go unused for 2-3 days, I turn them off.

It's mostly a matter of convenience. My power bill/usage is pretty low with this policy. I know computers aren't the #1 power sucker in many people's homes, but they are for me.

So anyway, I agree with charliex. The benefit of leaving a computer on all the time is questionable. Mostly because most people upgrade their computers within 5 years anyway. Normally the effect of flipping the power supply doesn't manifest itself within that time frame. On things like hard drives, CPU's, and the like, the risk is even lower.

I can add that the quip about "most external drives are designed to run 24/7" was your friend talking out of his ass.

External hard drives ARE internal hard drives packaged with a case and thier very own PSU. Just for fun they build in the USB and/or Firewire interfaces.

So, that much is crap anyway.

If you are only using that drive to back up, turn the damn thing off whenever you want. If it's not running, it's not suffering wear and tear, is it?

If you're using it every day, or three, maybe you might want to keep it on. Every month...turn that fucker off.

Computer geeks get so damn parinoid about every little point. You'd almost think they were engineers.

(my dad's an engineer computer geek, heh.)

I leave mine on 24/7. I use it a lot, and dont like waiting for it to boot up. The only time I reboot is if I am switching OS (my main machine dual boots XP and Mandrake) or if it has been on for a long time and Windows starts sucking a lot more memory than it should.

Shut it down before i go to bed so that it is off the whole night and the most of the next day when I am at school. No point in leaving is running 24/7 if I am only going to be using it 1-4 hours of the day.

I remember hearing that while your computer starts up, it takes a lot of power to do so, so it's better to just leave it on if you'll be back later, is that true?

When the maxtor 30GB 5400RPM drives came out I bought 3 off of a shady character about 5 years ago. For 4 years they were in my computer, and it (in it's many incarnations) was literally running for those 4 years straight. I sold all three off to my friends last year and they're still all running.

If a computer component is gonna bust of its own accord it's probably gonna either crap out on you in the first year or after a few years when it's worthless.

Leaving it on or off shouldn't really make a difference, it your baying your own electric bill turn it off since it's eating up gobs of money.

p.s. computer speakers should be turned off when not in use since they (the newer larger PC speakers) have a bad habit of wearing out rather fast.

Mean Time Before Failure...

wonder why they track that statistic on hard drives and other crucial components? Because there are some upper and lower limits to when these parts are going to fail.

Quote:

What is MTBF?
MTBF is the "mean time between failures," that is, the average elapsed time that passes before a failure occurs in a batch of drives under intense test conditions.

The initial inclination of those unfamiliar with the spec is to interpret it as the average expected lifespan of a single drive and either dismiss it as meaningless (bad) or assume this means their favorite drive will last decades (bad).

The SCSI-standard MTBF rating of 1.2 million hours, for example, does not mean that the average unit will run for 137 years before it fails. Likewise, the other extreme would be 1.2 million drives operating for one hour before one failed- equally unlikely.

Rather, MTBF is a product of a large quantity of drives (numbering in the hundreds or low thousands, perhaps) and the number of hours that such a batch runs before experiencing a failure. If a manufacturer places 1000 units to the test and on average manages to squeeze 50 days of operation out of the batch between each individual unit failure, that firm's product has achieved an MTBF of at least 1.2 million hours.

Sometimes, acceleration factors are used for calculating the MTBF of a drive. These are derived from standard statistical methods. Running the test at elevated temperatures beyond "normal," for example, will reduce the time needed to meet a certain number of test hours. Of course, the accuracy of this acceleration factor has a large effect on the final derived MTBF number.

That said, there's obviously some room for maneuver left in a "sweet spot" where firms may attempt to achieve target MTBF by either using more drives or more hours- there's no set unit count or elapsed time that we may regard as standard.

MTBF should be regarded as a minimum statement of reliability by the manufacturer. These days, no manufacturer will spec an enterprise-class drive below 1.2 million hours. Likewise, no firm will bother with MTBF less than 400,000 for a desktop-class disk. It is this consistency, rather than the spec's lack of meaning, that allows one to gloss over these claims.

link

The modern (after the ATX) AT systems will "soft off" and the connected components (monitor) will snooze. External drives will park and snooze also. There is no current flow unless excited by an external input (moving the mouse, pressing a switch). The circuits that control such are registered in milli amps, voltage is not a major factor.

Watch what hard drives you buy, I think it's IBM that changed their Deskstar's "max running hours per day" or what not to like 12 or 16.. Whereas most are 24.