urban myth or truth....

[jsabol]

Maybe I am too old school but I have always been told that leaving a system always on is better then shutting it down when finshed for the day. The reason being that it puts more strain on the system booting up then running all time. Myth or truth?

[Mr.Tweak]

That depends really. In this day and age, it's encourage to shut down or at least enter a reduced power state to save power. If you have a lot of hard disk drives in your system, there will be extra strain on them spinning up and down more, but I doubt it would do damage to them.

I say turn off your system if it doesn't need to be on.

[mptoledo]

Just my 2 cents, but unless you use it while you sleep, shut it down!!
Turning it on and off all day long (5 or more times) will wear it out faster. But 2 things to ponder...
1.) do you leave your car, lawn mower or TV on ? no of course not.
2.) Most people up grade every 1-2 years on average so you really never give your components a chance to wear out.
3.) By leaving it on you are more apt to kill your hardrive or fry your harddrive. If by some chance some mal-ware or virus gets on it and starts to replicate your system can go into maximum overdrive and can fry your whole system. Seen it happen on my bosses laptop. Rare but plausible!!

So my opinion and practice(last 15 years since my atari 800(Yeah, I am old)) has been to shut it down and I have had no ill affects from it.

[casecutter]

In theory, you would get atleast twice and most likely 4 times the run-time hours on an automobile engine if you never shut it off since starting a cold car engine does 90% of the damage to it during it's lifetime.

[mptoledo]

dude, wtf are you talking about(LYJG1130), your whole post was nothing but jiberish. Just say no to drugs(if you can't handle them, it will kill you!!

Casecutter: Being in the car industry for the last 9 years I can respond to you objection. You are absolutley correct about cars, but last time I checked your computer doesn't use oil to protect its crank case against friction.
My whole point was as long as you aren't constantly turning your computer on and off, it does less damage to just turn it off rather than leave it on. Plus you have to take into consideration that most people on this board partake in overclocking. I would rather not have my over clocked pc running constantly. Heat=killer in the pc world. so I still stick to my premise that you should turn your computer off if your not going to be using it for 3 or 4 hours. I have never experienced a problem doing this; Of course I do try to use the best components,(ie. corsair PS. "A" rated cooling, Crucial or Muskin ram and overall good reliable parts.) But to each his own. I doubt you encure any problems leaving it on, but you take more of a chance leaving it on than simply turning it off.

[eightball103]

as an electronics spazz, i have to say that computers dont suffer from this start-up ware that cars do... but constant running is bad, computers need to be restarted frequently to perform the multitudes of updates that MS forces upon us. as well as clear caches and kill unwanted processes. plus not to sound like a green supporter but you waste energy leaving it on, unless its doing seti or folding during its downtime.
my two pennies -aj