Leaving A PC On 24 Hours

[Experi-Mentor]

keeping pc "on" continuously prolongs your drives.
"cold starts" is what does the most damage.

[Chewy]

Of the last 3 drives I have seen fail, one ran for about a year 7/24 before dying, the other set for 6 months never used after a years worth of on and off. The last was a horribly fragmented laptop drive that died during defrag.
I have drives they got turned on and off several times a day still doing fine after years, drives stop all the time and spin back up during use.

[toomanycats]

Extreme cold does affect electronics, just look at an LCD display in the extreme cold. I don't think a "cold" start from room temperature will do anything to the average electronics these days, so if your in the Arctic or Antarctic circle, and you work outside, keep your PC on at all times.

[techreactor]

As already discussed, dust causes more heat buildup on components and moving parts wear out by running 24x7.

It also depends on your usage, i myself dont keep it running 24x7, since my daily usage is less and no point running the electricity bills for 2-3 hrs usage. Although if you are the lazy kind you can keep it in standby mode(less power use) and hibernation mode (no power usage) for a quick startup.

[Experi-Mentor]

larger majority of drive failures happen during "cold starts".
from fully cool/cold & idle, to eg. 7,200rpm in seconds ?
although drives have improved some of late, there is still a consistent patern that drives still fail mostly at this stage.

[xistenz]

Still runs like a charm

[toomanycats]

This thread reminds me of when people would say my TV has been running great, I watch it 6 hrs. a day for the last 4 years and all of sudden it stopped coming on. I would ask what changed? They would reply, I moved the TV from my dining room into my living room. All of the over heated sotters would come loose just enough to cause a breakdown. If you run anything 24/7 you are creating heat and with today's no-lead sottering there are other things like overheated header pins that could be affected, so it isn't just a hard/drive cpu issue, it is the whole system. Besides why waste all that electricity, if your hooked up to a national grid that's what is being done. Computers don't use that much juice but added up they do.

[Abuilder]

xistenz
Here is a quick tip for getting back to the root when at a DOS prompt.
Instead of using cd.. which only backs you down one directory at a time. Use cd\ an that will take you right to the root.

[jm1647]

Use this command from the command prompt to quickly get your PC's uptime
Use the command as it it with the quotes.

Systeminfo | Find "Up Time"

You'll see this output

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Rufus>Systeminfo | Find "Up Time"
System Up Time: 2 Days, 5 Hours, 12 Minutes, 26 Seconds

C:\Documents and Settings\Rufus>

[Abuilder]

jm1647

C:\Documents and Settings\Rufus>Systeminfo | Find "Up Time"

Well now, I'm impressed. Way back when DOS was about the only OS out there, very few ever knew how to use the pipe command.

[MikeyBK]

I've had a PC for about 8 years that was basically left on 24/7 most of it's life and is still running strong. I do completely clean all the dust off from time to time and once in a blue moon do shut it off for the night (maybe 5 days out of the year), but runs 24/7 basically.

BTW: I usually always only shut off the monitor.

[Miles101]

Makes me think of the Good old Day's of the Apple II E and leisure Suit Larry
one of the great dos games

[jm1647]

I've had a PC for about 8 years that was basically left on 24/7 most of it's life and is still running strong. I do completely clean all the dust off from time to time and once in a blue moon do shut it off for the night (maybe 5 days out of the year), but runs 24/7 basically.

BTW: I usually always only shut off the monitor.

Use power management on the HDDs also, no sense having them spinning if they ain't doing nothing

@Abuilder

[Chewy]

I have refurbished old computers that had dust bunnies that would choke a horse, they survived anything, newer computers that won't boot after you blow a piece of lint under the video heat sink.

[jm1647]

I have refurbished old computers that had dust bunnies that would choke a horse, they survived anything, newer computers that won't boot after you blow a piece of lint under the video heat sink.

Them old ISA cards were so big and they did hold a lot of dust. These new video cards draw more juice than my old 286 did. I still have it laying around with the top off and every time I pass by it and see all them cards stuck in there and the 5 1/4" floppy I just shake my head