"Sleep" or "Shut Down" ?

[LaCosta]

Is it better to Sleep or Shut Down if the machine is not used for an extended period?

What occurs when the machine is shut down....does it clear the cache and all? Does it at the same time run the hard drive a bit harder when it goes through the reboot process?

I have a 27" iMac with a 2TB fusion drive.

Thanks.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Is it better to Sleep or Shut Down if the machine is not used for an extended period?

What occurs when the machine is shut down....does it clear the cache and all? Does it at the same time run the hard drive a bit harder?

I have a 27" iMac with a 2TB fusion drive.

Thanks.

Hard drive won't spin up at all in sleep. Remember with a fusion drive, the spinner only kicks in when you accessing something on that part of your drive. Mostly it just sits idle whilst you use the SSD portion.
Running a late 2012 iMac here with fusion drive that's only never been shut down. Restarted a few times with software upgrades, but that's about it.

 

[Gav2k]

Sleep. After a while it'll go into deep sleep anyway

 

[Hellhammer]

There's not really a need to shut down modern computers unless there's an update or issue that requires a reboot.

 

[Laurie65]

Sleep.