Keeping an iMac on all day, possibly longer?

[SkyBell]

My parents have a Dell Dimension desktop that has been running continuously, save for power failures, for 11 years now. You'll be fine.

 

[JForestZ34]

Yeah but wat about sleeping option? Is sleeping turning off your HDD? If yes, it's not so good to often turn on and then turn off your HDD...

Having your hard drive spin all the time all day everyday is not good for the drive. Many techs say this. Why would they give you an option to turn off hard drives when not in use. It saves premature wear on the drive.

I have my iMac on except when it storms outside but mine stays on. The screen shuts off after 30 mins of non use and the iMac sleeps after 1 1/2 hours. No problems here


James

 

[sainsburys]

Having your hard drive spin all the time all day everyday is not good for the drive. Many techs say this. Why would they give you an option to turn off hard drives when not in use. It saves premature wear on the drive.
James

Yep, but they are also saying that launching and stopping your hdd are most harmful process for disk in HDD...

 

[JForestZ34]

Yep, but they are also saying that launching and stopping your hdd are most harmful process for disk in HDD...

Wow this is the first I'm hearing of this. In the 20+ years I've been using computers I've never had one fail cause of this. I've had an external drive wear out cause it would never stop spinning but this is new to me.


James

 

[sainsburys]

Wow this is the first I'm hearing of this. In the 20+ years I've been using computers I've never had one fail cause of this. I've had an external drive wear out cause it would never stop spinning but this is new to me.

Me neither. I'm just saying: when HDD is about to turn off, head is landing on platter and because of that it's actually physically touching this platter. Considering this fact, we can assume that this can be one of most dangerous aspect of HDD work. Isn't that true?

 

[GGJstudios]

Me neither. I'm just saying: when HDD is about to turn off, head is landing on platter and because of that it's actually physically touching this platter.

Unless there's a defect or damage in a drive, the heads never touch the platter at any time.

 

[sainsburys]

Unless there's a defect or damage in a drive, the heads never touch the platter at any time.

Really? I'm quite sure that when landing, it is. Can you give me some source?

 

[GGJstudios]

Really? I'm quite sure that when landing, it is. Can you give me some source?

Heads float above the surface of the disks. If they touched them, they would scratch the surface, destroying the drive.

Hard-disk platter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the hard-disk drive the hard-drive heads fly and move radially over the surface of the spinning platters to read or write the data.

Head crash - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A head crash is a hard-disk failure that occurs when a read–write head of a hard disk drive comes in contact with its rotating platter, resulting in permanent and usually irreparable damage to the magnetic media on the platter surface.

A head normally rides on a thin film of moving air entrapped at the surface of its platter (some drives of the mid-1990s used a thin liquid layer instead). The topmost layer of the platter is made of a Teflon-like material that acts like a lubricant. Underneath is a layer of sputtered carbon. These two layers protect the magnetic layer (data storage area) from most accidental touches of the read-write head.

 

[plymman]

I've seen the figures but struggle trying to put them in a real world context. As a rough guess, how much would it cost in £ and pence to run a 27" iMac 24/7 compared to putting it to sleep? For some reason my iMac randomly wakes from sleep whenever it chooses, if I could leave it running with a black screen it wouldn't wake me up at 3 am!

 

[sainsburys]

Thank you GGJstudios! Today I learned something new

 

[mmomega]

My iMac gets turned off when a storm takes out the power.

It gets rebooted for OS X updates.

Same.

Actually in the last 10yrs years or so I can not remember turning any of my computers off.

 

[thatoneguy82]

Wait, wha?! You mean I can actually turn it off?!

I know this thread is for an iMac, but this is from a MBP perspective.

The only computer I remember ever turning off were the ones we had at school. But, the ones I've owned I never did. Well, I did a couple times with my MBP when I went somewhere and I wouldn't be using my MBP to save battery life. Also, when it heats up like crazy and the fans are extra loud. Sure, I'd restart but never shut down. I have a MBP so I want quick access to my computer when I lift the lid instead of waiting for it to boot again. But, I have a SSD, so it's not that bad. In any case, just leave it on unless of course it starts to heat up and blow the fans like crazy.

 

[cooky560]

11:18 up 23 days, 2 users, load averages: 0.96 0.64 0.43

No problems so far