Author Topic: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?  (Read 24915 times)

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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #25 on: January 08, 2024, 10:21:36 am »
With spinning disks it's best (for longevity) to leave them spinning rather than letting them power down and up on activity + timeout.
The starting/stopping is what wears the motor and bearings, and the thermal cycling isn't good on other parts either.

Not disputing that but do you have a reference for it? A simple thought experiment suggests it isn't true for all cases (5 mins run time every 20 years, for example) so there should be some point where best practice changes from turning off to leaving it on.
I would say it is heavily dependent on the use case. A computer that powers on/off several times a day might be a problem, as the startup current on HDD motors is much higher than nominal, according to a resident expert that used to work on this industry. However, this is certainly not true for very lightly used servers - our NAS sees very little activity (accessed once every few days) and there is no scenario where leaving it powered will extend its life, as bearings will be the dominant wear factor.
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Offline coromonadalix

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #26 on: January 08, 2024, 10:53:39 am »
my personal computer  is going into sleep / hybernation every day,  mostly build silent with almost nothing who spin,  nvme / ssd based

it's been 2 years now ... no problems, and i'm on a ups,  only a few times the computer has fully shutted down ...

starts in 8 seconds .... not fast enough loll   

Firefox with multiple panes always opened,   "tab saver pluggin"  "Firemin application"  just in case
Outlook ready to go

few hibernation / sleep   settings and optimization,  that's all
 

Online EPAIII

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #27 on: January 08, 2024, 11:25:47 am »
Sleep mode is not off.

Even power off mode is not really off.

If you want a computer to be really shut off, you need to connect it through a power strip and turn that power strip off.

Even that does not work for a lap-top. I think there you would need to actually remove the battery.
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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #28 on: January 08, 2024, 12:20:43 pm »
No need to remove batteries. In a laptop you put it down by issuing a "Shut Down", not an S0 "Modern Sleep Mode" which can apply updates and bring up the computer without your knowledge. i have been using Windows 10 and 11 for quite some time now and this effectively prevents any computer activity.
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Online tom66

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #29 on: January 08, 2024, 12:39:21 pm »
Is motor failure of HDDs a realistic risk?  It's my understanding HDD failures typically occur for a few reasons:

a) Head touches disk surface due to excessive vibration/physical shock/bearing failure;
b) Too many sectors become irretrievable, leading to breakdown of the filesystem, possibly due to (a);
c) Disk controller failure for unknown reasons, ESD/power supply issues, random silicon death etc.

I haven't heard of motors failing.  Typically, one would expect a brushless motor to survive hundreds of thousands of hours.  The bearing is a risk, but I think it should be well established now how to make these bearings last a very long time given the precision elsewhere used in hard drive manufacture.

Spinup/spindown shouldn't correlate strongly with HDD life in "normal" applications (shutting down disks on idle) IMO.
 

Offline DiTBho

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #30 on: January 08, 2024, 12:53:48 pm »
Is motor failure of HDDs a realistic risk?  It's my understanding HDD failures typically occur for a few reasons:

a) Head touches disk surface due to excessive vibration/physical shock/bearing failure;
b) Too many sectors become irretrievable, leading to breakdown of the filesystem, possibly due to (a);
c) Disk controller failure for unknown reasons, ESD/power supply issues, random silicon death etc.

I haven't heard of motors failing.  Typically, one would expect a brushless motor to survive hundreds of thousands of hours.  The bearing is a risk, but I think it should be well established now how to make these bearings last a very long time given the precision elsewhere used in hard drive manufacture.

Spinup/spindown shouldn't correlate strongly with HDD life in "normal" applications (shutting down disks on idle) IMO.

Yup, exactly as I have already written something detailed in two topics here on this forum and have been ignored  :o
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Online Psi

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #31 on: January 08, 2024, 12:57:26 pm »
Motor failure is the motor driver IC, rather than the motor itself.  The motors do die, but motor controller death is far more common.


With spinning disks it's best (for longevity) to leave them spinning rather than letting them power down and up on activity + timeout.
The starting/stopping is what wears the motor and bearings, and the thermal cycling isn't good on other parts either.

Not disputing that but do you have a reference for it? A simple thought experiment suggests it isn't true for all cases (5 mins run time every 20 years, for example) so there should be some point where best practice changes from turning off to leaving it on.

That is true,  but in a typical use case when you have the feature enabled you end up with many more on/off cycles than you would have had with the feature off.
Perhaps i should have added "for a typical use case" to my previous comment.
There is also the annoyance of the ~2 second delay when you click on the drive in windows explorer and it locks up waiting for the drive to finish starting and become available for access.

Sorry I dont have any reference, 
« Last Edit: January 08, 2024, 01:06:55 pm by Psi »
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Online PlainName

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #32 on: January 08, 2024, 01:43:05 pm »
Aren't most things prone to failure when powered up? So not turning them off makes sense on that basis.

But... electrolytics don't have a finite life, so leaving them on may wear them out. And, probably, any issue with those would be noticeable when starting up whereas the same fault wouldn't cause a shut down once working. Similarly, disks may be borked but limping along, and it's only when you try to cold start them that they actually show how bad it is. So perhaps it's not that clear at all.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2024, 05:47:40 pm by PlainName »
 

Offline rdl

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #33 on: January 09, 2024, 04:31:24 pm »
With spinning disk drives, how long they last is surely related to how they are used. I have a server for archival purposes, it can be days between times when it is accessed. Sometimes even as long as a month. There is no way I can believe that leaving the drives running constantly will make them last longer than if they are shut down when not needed.
 

Offline mcarp

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #34 on: January 10, 2024, 10:59:33 am »
5 computers on 24/7, 2 of them since 2008.  those 2008 machines have both had 2 psu replacements.  laptop had a wall wart replacement, its but up for about 10 years. battery died, not replaced.  2 i7s just installed christmas of 2022. no drive or other components have gone bad except for 1 network adapter built in got flakey and i put in an expansion card to replace that one. also on 24/7 for the past 25 years a theater 5.1 channel amplifier and speakers. oh, i had 2 17 inch very very old acer monitors that went bad, caps replaced, both went bad again, but those were whew, er, before the 2008 computers.
 

Online Psi

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #35 on: January 10, 2024, 12:38:14 pm »
With spinning disk drives, how long they last is surely related to how they are used. I have a server for archival purposes, it can be days between times when it is accessed. Sometimes even as long as a month. There is no way I can believe that leaving the drives running constantly will make them last longer than if they are shut down when not needed.

Yep, how many times the data is being accessed each day is the key.

They could be doing spin up/down/up/down/up/down 100 times a day, or once a day. etc.. depending on what your doing.
My only real point was that excessive spin-up spin-down is not good, and IMHO the default time to spin-down is way to short, especially on some drives like WD green's.


« Last Edit: January 10, 2024, 01:08:43 pm by Psi »
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Offline coromonadalix

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Re: In 2024, do you let your computer go to sleep or not ?
« Reply #36 on: January 10, 2024, 12:53:21 pm »
just got an  usb3 to 8 drives storage, 8x power switch for all hdd if needed,  and a main power switch 
thermally controlled fan,  spin very low if no spinning drives and will ramp up if needed

the spinning drives after some time +/-15 min,  will spin down automatically,  you access them  and they will spin up ...   

but for sure,  when all 8 are not used, i do a full shutdown.
 


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