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Is it bad to leave ibook on 24/7?
- Thread starter WillMak
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Yes necessarily. It is bad for your hard drive to be spinning all the time in a notebook however as buryyourbrideau implies, the main issue is whether there is sufficient ventilation for the iBook.
A hard drive spinning all the time will not last as long as one that is given a rest at night. However, a hard drive that isn't kept cool will last for even less time.
A hard drive spinning all the time will not last as long as one that is given a rest at night. However, a hard drive that isn't kept cool will last for even less time.
i leave mine on 24/7 i usually restart it about once a week but thats about the only time i turn it off
mad jew said:
yea i did not mean that there is not a problem. really there is, running your hard disk all the time will significantly shorten the lifespan of it, but if there is not proper ventilation then the hard disk could go out at any time.
WillMak said:
But do you really need to use BitTorrent 24/7? I mean, is there really that much legal stuff for you to download?
For the sake of your iBook, let it sleep when you do.
Letting your hard drive spin all the time is bad for it, but having it spin up and down all the time is even worse. The best thing for a hard drive is never to use it, but even that's not guaranteed. Just make regular backups and you'll be OK.
It's also very bad for the display, if you're talking about running it with the cover open. This will seriously reduce its useful life by making brightness and color accuracy degrade faster. Make sure the backlight is turned off when you're not actively using it (IOW, not just a screensaver, which doesn't do much for LCDs anyway).
Good point HiRez. Turn the brightness right down (as far as it goes) to preserve display life-span if you don't already.
G5Unit said:
i never sleep my ibook, i have the screensaver set to go on at 5 mins of inactivity and display sleeps at 10. i have it running all the time, but the hd is never running all the time as that point was hammered in this thread. its set to sleep.
Josh2022 said:
That's just the time between restarts though. Not letting your display nor your hard drive sleep for a week is not a good idea.
My 12 inch ibook stays on all the time. Granted, at night its either on with the screen off or sleeping, but it rarely gets restarted more than once every week or so. I don't think i've actually turned it off since I got it 2 months ago
And while a hard drive spinning 24/7 will indeed wear it out in a very bad way, having it spin up and down all the time is worse. I think someone allready mentioned that, but I second the notion. A HD consistently spinning and then resting for a period of time is a very healthy way to run your lappy.
And while a hard drive spinning 24/7 will indeed wear it out in a very bad way, having it spin up and down all the time is worse. I think someone allready mentioned that, but I second the notion. A HD consistently spinning and then resting for a period of time is a very healthy way to run your lappy.
mad jew said:They don't generally run on 2.5 inch laptop hard drives.
Actually, there are server-rated 2.5" hard drives coming out. They're intended for 1U rack servers and other applications where small physical size and low power requirements are important.
And I'm surprised by the posts that imply a quick and painful death is coming for a laptop drive that's left spinning 24/7. That just isn't true as long as the system has proper ventilation (sitting on a hard surface with the lid open and nothing covering the vents). It's a hard drive. It's meant to spin. It may reduce the overal lifespan a little bit over the long term but, I'm assuming anyone who leaves their computer on 24/7 is a bit of a computer junky. The drive (and probably the whole comuter) will be replaced long before it wears out from "overuse".
My ibook's been running pretty much non-stop for a year and a half. Probably closer to two years. The display shuts off after 15 minutes but the drive never stops spinning. Uptime us usually measured in months (real uptime, not sleeping for weeks at a time). Still works as well as the day I got it.