{"id":3416,"date":"2011-12-23T13:12:39","date_gmt":"2011-12-23T18:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=3416"},"modified":"2011-12-23T13:12:39","modified_gmt":"2011-12-23T18:12:39","slug":"should-you-shutdown-your-desktop-every-night-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/should-you-shutdown-your-desktop-every-night-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Should you shutdown your desktop every night, or not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marge wants to know if she should leave her computer running or shut it down
\n<\/strong>Hi, TC and EB! First of all, thanks again for all your support, tips, letters….. ! Anytime I have a doubt, I refer back to your newsletters for an answer, knowing I can trust your recommendations!<\/p>\n

I have a question that everybody seems to have different opinions on…. is it better to turn off the computer at night, or is it OK to leave it on. I leave it on because I schedule my antivirus and antispyware scans, as well as HandyBackup to run during the night, so they don’t slow down my computer while I’m working on it. I’d really like to know your opinion. Thanks a lot! Marge<\/p>\n

Our answer
\n<\/strong>Thanks very much for your nice comments and your faith in us.<\/p>\n

Think of this – Web servers, which are computers, run 24\/7\/365 year after year. They are never shut down – backups are made on-the-fly using something called RAID. There are differing opinions on whether it is harder on your hard drive(s) if you leave your computer running or shut it down. It’s a pretty general consensus that there is less wear and tear on your hard drives if you leave your computer running. Rebooting and shutting down are harder on hard drives than running constantly. When a computer boots, the hard drives have to spin up to speed. Those who shutdown every night and start up the next day are causing their hard drives to spin up every day, and we feel, as many others do that this causes extra wear and tear on hard drives.<\/p>\n

There are some who claim leaving your computer running and connected to the Web (if you have broadband connection, unless you disconnect from it at night, it will be connected) 24 hours a day exposes you to more dangers. Our opinion? Poppycock. If you have installed good AV and antispyware software, there’s no more danger at 2AM than there is at 2PM. This type of reasoning smacks of the boogeyman stories we heard when we were kids. There indeed are bogeymen on the Web – and there are a lot of them – but they are always out there looming – at noon as well as at midnight. If your computer is protected at noon then it’s protected at midnight too.<\/p>\n

There are two sides to every story and many will disagree with us, I’m sure. But here’s something you should know – we both have broadband connections – and we have had for many years. Unless we have to reboot for something – like running a system restore, or after installing software, etc. we leave our computers running 24\/7\/365. And we’ve been doing it for years. We have computers that are 6 years old that have been running for 6 years except for occasional reboots. And we’ve always gotten about 4 1\/2 to 5 years from our hard drives before we’ve had to replace them. And keep in mind we’re using our computer for 8 to 12 hours every day. We’re getting maximum life out of our computers and hard drives – and we leave our computers running. So we practice what we preach – isn’t that refreshing in this age of hypocrisy?<\/p>\n

Leave it running, Joanne. That’s our advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marge wants to know if she should leave her computer running or shut it down Hi, TC and EB! First of all, thanks again for all your support, tips, letters….. ! Anytime I have a doubt, I refer back to your newsletters for an answer, knowing I can trust your recommendations! I have a question that everybody seems\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3417,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3416\/revisions\/3417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}