Chris G cl@isbd.net
There is then of course the question of whether turning the machine on and off two or three times a day will wear it out more quickly than leaving it permanently running.
You may find help with suspend in the Linux Ecology HOWTO [ox.ac.uk LDP mirror] along with many other tips on how to reduce environmental damage from your computer. http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Ecology-HOWTO/index.html
Simon Richter emailed me notes about the different types of disk - which I don't really understand so I've asked him to publish them himself at http://www.hogyros.de/?q=blog/1 - the gist seemed to be server disks don't like being power cycled repeatedly and yanking the power is very harmful to desktop disks.
I've read articles that warn against powering down and up too often. They say that more frequent heating/cooling causing parts to fail, but I find the fans fail most often - which brings a different heating failure problem! I prefer to save some fan spin instead.
(Edited repeat of http://mjr.towers.org.uk/blog/2006/lynn#howtonotmelt )
Hope that helps,
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:30:33PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
Chris G cl@isbd.net
There is then of course the question of whether turning the machine on and off two or three times a day will wear it out more quickly than leaving it permanently running.
You may find help with suspend in the Linux Ecology HOWTO [ox.ac.uk LDP mirror] along with many other tips on how to reduce environmental damage from your computer. http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Ecology-HOWTO/index.html
Useful, thank you.
Simon Richter emailed me notes about the different types of disk - which I don't really understand so I've asked him to publish them himself at http://www.hogyros.de/?q=blog/1 - the gist seemed to be server disks don't like being power cycled repeatedly and yanking the power is very harmful to desktop disks.
Yanking the power is harmful to any disk isn't it!
I've read articles that warn against powering down and up too often. They say that more frequent heating/cooling causing parts to fail, but I find the fans fail most often - which brings a different heating failure problem! I prefer to save some fan spin instead.
Yes, it's a difficult course to steer isn't it.
On Mon, 2009-08-17 at 14:11 +0100, Chris G wrote:
On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 12:30:33PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
I've read articles that warn against powering down and up too often. They say that more frequent heating/cooling causing parts to fail, but I find the fans fail most often - which brings a different heating failure problem! I prefer to save some fan spin instead.
Yes, it's a difficult course to steer isn't it.
If one intended to keep computer hardware until it wore out it should be possible to resolve this with the necessary statistics though they are doubtless hard to come by. If the environmental cost of making a new hard disk (for example) is known, the reduction in life due to power cycling known and the energy saved by power cycling also known it should be possible to calculate the better strategy for the environment.
In practice though I suspect most hardware is replaced long before it has worn out because the owner fancied something faster, smaller or with higher capacity and therefore the correct strategy in most cases is the one that provides an immediate energy saving, i.e. turning off things that are not being used rather than worrying about hardware life.
Steve.
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Chris G -
MJ Ray -
Steve Fosdick