Shutting Down

Lots of people ask me and indeed post on these forums whether they should shut down their computers at night? Indeed it is becoming quite annoying having emails bombarding me from about a million different sources so next time they ask me I can just point them to this thread!

Whether to shut down at night or not is a very contraversial question. In the past, it was recomended not to shut down a computer as stopping and starting caused unnecessary ware and tear on the hard disk. Eight hours running time was the supposed equivelant of stopping and starting the drive, and therefore leaving it on let the computer last for longer before turning it off.

Nowadays, this is not the case: manufacturers such as Seagate have said that, "Sarting and stopping is not a huge problem with drives any more, and they can be safely shut on and off in order that they might save power. You can expect a drive to last for three to five years of running time before dying, though obviously many drives last longer."

The main cause of hard drive failure now is heat. Logically, therefore, the best way of stopping your computer from overheating is to shut it down when you are not using it - no matter how many fans you have they can fail. This also saves power and therefore contributes to saving the planet from global warming.

So, which option, stand-by, hibernate or shut down? This bit really is your decision and all I can do is advise you. I am not a great fan of hibernation, as although it does allow quick start-up, saves a complete image of your desktop and saves it to your hard disk. This does not appeal to me as I am very pushed for hard disk space and hibernation creates lots of unnecessary files which frankly, I could really do without.

Stand-by seems like a nice option. This cuts power to stuff like hard disks, monitor, peripherals, e.t.c. but keeps supplying power to the RAM for quick start-up time. For some reason it keeps supplying power to some USB devices on some computers for some reason? The other unexplained mystery behind stand-by is that some games and some other programs never seem to work after stand-by so you have to do a complete system restart which can take more time and be much more annoying.

Finally, some say it is the best to actually shut the thing down. Yes, you heard me right - shut it down. This is actually an option on the turn off computer menu you know? There are various advantages of shutting down and only one major disadvantage that I can think of. Advantages include: no power usage, no nead to worry about heat and if you are using a desktop, the ability to unplug overnight in case of a thunder-storm. The disadvantage is that the less patient among us will notice that start-up time is greatly increased.

So next time your in this difficult scenario why not consider this stange new concept of shutting down and next time your boss bothers you and asks, "So what are you and your family doing about saving the environment?" you can confidently reply, "I shut my computer down." Owned.

By Matt Ireland. Please ask me before using this text or any part of this text in any sort of publication including books, websites and coursework/projects. My address is: [email protected] Let's face it, I'm probably going to say yes just as long as you provide a link back to here and credit for me, but isn't it nice just to ask first? Thanks.

 

Remember Windows 95 "Start Me UP"?

Now it's time to shut me down - Windows Vista.

 

LOL so true. Thank goodness OS X doesn't have the stand-by-and-programs-stop-working issue.

 

I sooo agree with you - Windows is a load of nonesence sometimes (actually most of the time).

 

Hibernate and Shut-Down has their own place. If you're going to bed down for the night might as well shut your comp down. If you're going to be on it for the day and taking long breaks then I would Hibernate. Yes Hard Drives have come a long way. You can even stop the hard drive while you're working on something and will only come on when it's needed.

 

wow - how do u stop the hard disk???

 

By putting the whole computer into a low power state like standby or hibernate?

 

No - when the computer's actually on but your not using it?

 

I love the italics at the bottom.

 

I don't know if you can do it in XP, but in Vista, go
Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> "Change When the Computer Sleeps" (under Power Options) -> "Change Advanced Power Settings"
and then under "Hard Drive" you can set how long to wait before shutting the hard drive(s) down.

This lets Vista turn off the hard drive if you haven't used it in a while, but your computer still stays on.

It actually scared the crap out of me the first time it happened. I have two hard drives in my desktop (one is just for storage and backup), and I was just browsing along when I heard it click and shut off, and I thought my hard drive had failed. Instead, it was just Vista shutting down my second Storage hard drive because I wasn't using it.