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.