Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!verifone!veritoo!aloha1!pegasus!richard
From: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Leave the PC on vs. Power it off daily?
Message-ID: <1990Oct3.090327.10731@pegasus.com>
Date: 3 Oct 90 09:03:27 GMT
References: <1990Sep17.205845.12803@pdn.paradyne.com> <1990Sep19.115137.22763@wciu.EDU> <7164@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Organization: Pegasus,  Honolulu
Lines: 20

>>>With todays pc hardware, exactly how dangerous is each power cycle?  
>>>If you power your office unit off every night, are you in for early 
>>>hardware failures?  Or is this all propaganda spread by electric power 
>On page 32 on the Sept 24 INFOWORLD, Steve Gibson (of Gibson Research and
>SpinRite fame) discusses several aspects of this long running debate.
>He says "I have determined that hard disk-based personal computer
>workstations should never be turned off." [...]

Considering some of the lame and stupid things Spinrite does I wouldn't
put too much stalk in Gibson's word on the subject.  If you use Spinrite
with the defaults it will try to bring factory-bad-blocks back into use.
If you do something that stupid you'd have good reason to keep things
powered up for maximum temperature stability, etc.

I prefer leaving things powered up myself, but here it's also for some
protection against humidity.


-- 
Richard Foulk		richard@pegasus.com