Quote:
Originally Posted by Marshall Bennett
Most machines both mechanical and electrical that have moving parts fair better operating than constantly being turned off and on.
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It's not that simple. If the machine is constantly on for a week, that might be more wear than booting seven times.
Nevertheless, as I mentioned above, if the computer goes to sleep mode with the hard drive stopped, you are putting the same wear on the drive as if you just booted. The drive still has to spin up from sleep mode, and if the drive is fragmented, the head has to jump around when spinning up from sleep to reload the swap file.
Electronic parts are usually unaffected by booting, unless there is some surge problem. However, spurious surges can happen while the computer is running.
And again, the longer you leave your computer on, the more you subject the components to heat.
Also, by leaving the computer idle and connected to the Internet, you are unnecessarily keeping it exposed to attack.
