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From: mstr@vipunen.hut.fi (Markus Strand)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: TURN COMPUTER OFF OR LEAVE ON?
Message-ID: <1991Jun12.212725.27275@nntp.hut.fi>
Date: 12 Jun 91 21:27:25 GMT
References: <1991Jun7.154552.14096@infonode.ingr.com> <1991Jun8.081224.19511@nntp.hut.fi> <3030@public.BTR.COM>
Sender: usenet@nntp.hut.fi (Usenet pseudouser id)
Reply-To: mstr@vipunen.hut.fi (Markus Strand)
Organization: Helsinki University of Technology
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In article <3030@public.BTR.COM> thad@public.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan) writes:
>From many talks with Hard Drive Repair and Data Recovery Services around the
>country, the two WORST times for a hard drive are power-up and power-down due
>to non-optimal platter rotation and head movement to/from "park."

Most lightbulbs break when you are powering up, but you still 
haven't your light on all the time.

True that most people find out that their harddrive doesn't work when
they are powering up. But the fault might have happened long before.
I've used lots of motors spinnig lots of different devices. They all
stopped working when they were started. But they didn't break because
they were powered-down and -up. They were worn down by use. So does
all diskdrives.

There is a solution for the problem:
U+D <= nW  where U is powering-up, D is powering-down and
	   W is constantly running computers risks and wear.
         You'll have to find the variable 'n' which is time...
	 I'm sure  n < 10h 


>>I have and will in the future not run my computers 24h if
>>there is nothing going on in the CPU.
>
>I'm surprised to read that.  In my opinion, if your computer is not instantly
>available to serve you, then you are a slave to your computer.

If you can't wait 10s when your computer is booting, you're a slave...

>Because I consider my computers as "tools", I keep them running constantly
>so that *I* need NOT wait to take notes during a phone call, or check out a
>piece of code, or search some database, or enter financial transactions, or
>anything else for which *I* use computers.  If I had to wait for bootup then
>I've been inconvenienced and the potential of the computer as an appliance has
>been diminished.

Do you have your drill spinning just in case you might need a hole? No. 
Why should you have your computer spinning when you don't need computing.

If you can't say: "Wait a second while my computer is booting."
and/or you really need it often (never idle over night), then
you should leave it on 24h. But if you computer is in idle over
night I would not have it running. 


Markus Strand
mstr@vipunen.hut.fi