On Wed, 07 Apr 2004, Antonio Rodriguez wrote: > Now, putting together what you and Roberto said, what about if the > machine is in your home, then what, leave it on for days and months > and months is better than shutting it down once in a while? Who takes > it better, AMD or INTEL, or even Crusoe?
Disks will have their lifetime reduced by spin-ups and spin-downs, and they may stress the PSU at spin-up. During startup, this is worse, since the PSU is already strained by it's own powerup cycle. Laptop disks are engineered to survive a lot more spin-up/spin-down cycles, though... and I have no idea if they like being left spinning continously for months. Defective (non-laptop) disks will die faster if left running for too long, due to design deficiencies. I say let them die, you never know if you've got one anyway, and most disks hate spin cycles. Monitors should be allowed to turn off the beam when they are not going to be used for a long time, to increase useful lifetime of the tube (and to stop wasting power uselessly). Using the power saving modes of the monitor is probably better for the unit than switching it off manually. Disks that can do delayed spin-up will help a lot to avoid early PSU death. SATA should have made that non-optional, SCSI does it right. Anything that gets the processor to "keep itself cool" while going from idle to almost-full-power as a crazed rabbit will fuck the entire system much sooner, and reduce the stability too. I know some old Athlons (of the 200MHz FSB era) did this, but I have no idea if the way it works has been changed in newer ones. -- "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
