Is it better to keep putting my Mac to sleep or just let it turn itself off?.

[Fishtalk]

I keep hitting Suspend Activity... to save my old HD... then 5 minutes later I suddenly remember something I needed to do and fire it up again.... I manage to do this about 20 times a day and was wondering if it might be better for the HD to leave it to go to sleep all on its own. Does the physical effort of re starting each time put more strain on my HD than leaving it on. I have an "OLD" Pismo G3 and have night mares about it crashing for good, 'cos i cant afford a new Mac for the moment. Thanks for your advice .

 

[Razorhog]

I'm not an expert by any means, but I think leaving in on all the time would be less harmful than the sleep/wake cycle you described. I kept having problems with mine due to sleep. Now it is awake at all hours (just the screen turns off). Seems to work better for me.

 

[twoodcc]

I'm not an expert by any means, but I think leaving in on all the time would be less harmful than the sleep/wake cycle you described. I kept having problems with mine due to sleep. Now it is awake at all hours (just the screen turns off). Seems to work better for me.

i agree with you. i think you should only put it to sleep when it will stay asleep for at least a couple of hours.

 

[Rustman]

You can change the frequency that your hard drive goes to sleep in the energy saver. It's the box that says "Put the hard disks to sleep when possible".

I also use Macpilot, which allows you to set the frequency yourself to a lower or higher number (the default is sleep after 10 minutes).

There has never been any definitive proof (at least I've never seen any) that proves that wear on tear on computer electronics is severely affected by powering up/down/sleep modes etc. etc.

There is a school of thought that says computers should just be left on and never shut down and there are those that believe it doesn't make any difference to their lifespan.

Basically, hot things like hard drives, CPU's and power supplies and the stuff they plug into go bang every once in a while and no one is ever sure why. They just do. Electronics aren't perfect. They are usually built cheaply and are mass-produced.

I would recommend that you carry on doing whatever is most convenient for you and stop worrying about it. At least it sounds like you are energy concious.

If anyone can show me empirical evidence proving me wrong, I'd love to have a link.

 

[Fishtalk]

Fishtalk

Thanks for your info.... I have reduced the time that it goes to sleep all on its own (10 min) and I'll stop using the "suspend Activitys" except for final close down of the day....