Restarting and Shutting Down Mac - Pros/Cons?

[~Shard~]

Just wondering what the benefits are of leaving my Mac on all the time, when starting it up from scratch only takes 30 seconds as it is. It's just that I have always been in the habit of shutting down my PC whenever I go to bed. It gives the system a rest, clears out the memory, etc. Plus, it makes things a little easier on my power bills too. In any case, since I received my new Mac a couple weeks ago, I've just been shutting it down every night.

So, just wondering, is it bad to shut it down and restart it every day, or does it really matter? Just wanting to do what's best for my nice new Maac!

Maybe it's a stupid question, but just thought I'd ask...

 

[plasticparadox]

I suppose if you fold, then leaving your Mac on 24/7 can be a good thing.

I put mine to sleep at night. I don't bother shutting down.

 

[mms]

My computer is shut down whenever I'm not home. It's just a habit I have from back when I used OS 9, when coming back from sleep took a long time and often froze up or had some problems.

I don't think it would harm your computer in any way if you keep it on all the time.

 

[~Shard~]

Okay, sounds good. I just wanted to make sure there were no problems with starting and shutting it down every day either. I have no problems leaving it on, other than those power bills tend to start getting higher and higher the longer I leave my computer on, and I'm very cost-conscious when it comes to things like that. If it doesn't really hurt the machine to shut it down every nite, then I'll just do that as usual. It's probably a good thing to clear the memory, reload the OS, and give my Mac a rest as well.

Thanks for the input!

 

[Independence]

I leave my PC on for long periods of time and shut it down when I go to bed. Not much need to listen to the fans when I'm trying to sleep (even though my dying ceiling fan makes more noise) unless I'm running BitTorrent or Limewire (don't ask ). It's always been a habit for me.

 

[iChan]

apparently, if you use your computer a lot, you actually use less electricity putting your mac to sleep than rebooting, as a HD uses up most electricity when it is booting up and warming up first after shut down.

 

[revenuee]

I use to shut down because my SCSI card under OS 9 didn't support proper sleep so the computer was to loud to sleep with.

Now under OS 10 since i have the full sleep function back i just put the thing to sleep ... that and when i shut down, my SCSI screws up and the hard drive doesn't mount, so i have to delete the extension then reinstall it, and then restart again, to much hassle.

now i only restart when i need to put into OS 9 since the capture to my SCSI drive drops frames under OS 10

 

[mms]

Shutting it down and starting it back up is definitely not bad for your computer. One reason that I do that every night is because I'm afraid I might be harming the computer if I keep it on all the time. Since I rarely get crashes in OS X, my computer would then be on for weeks or even months at a time.

IMHO even if you do use your computer often throughout the day it might be a good idea to shut it down at least during the night.

 

[Westside guy]

Re: Restarting and Shutting Down Mac - Pros/Cons?

Originally posted by ~Shard~
Just wondering what the benefits are of leaving my Mac on all the time, when starting it up from scratch only takes 30 seconds as it is. It's just that I have always been in the habit of shutting down my PC whenever I go to bed. It gives the system a rest, clears out the memory, etc. Plus, it makes things a little easier on my power bills too. In any case, since I received my new Mac a couple weeks ago, I've just been shutting it down every night.

I usually just "sleep" my powerbook after logging out. There shouldn't be any real need to reboot your system - most all Unixes are rock stable and unlikely to suffer from significant memory leaks (which is the main reason rebooting PCs can be helpful at times). As with most Unix systems, the only real reason for rebooting is when you've updated the system kernel.

Individual programs can occasionally have problems with memory, which is why I go ahead and log out since that terminates any processes I've launched. Also I think there's a decent security argument for doing it as well.

Having said all that - I agree that there's nothing inherently problematic with shutting your system down at night.

 

[Nermal]

Apart from waiting for the system to boot up again, the only real disadvantage of shutting down is that the system maintenance tasks won't take place. It might help to run the following command every couple of weeks:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

 

[Daveman Deluxe]

Nermal:
System maintenance tasks don't happen if the computer is asleep either.

 

[KBFinFan]

I always used to leave my PC on at night and during the day and it worked fine and dandy up until I 'switched.' Although it did have its share of restarts when windows deciding to break, crash, or cause other general troubles.

My powerbook goes to sleep every night, and only restarts for system updates. It seems fine and I do not see any harm in what I am doing. It's how I've always treated my computers so it's how I will continue...