I'm sure this has been hashed out many times before, but I can't find
anything in the HOWTOs or other documentation on this issue.
I've got a relatively old machine (P90, with a 1Gig drive) that's in use
now as my home server. Since I'm at work most of the day, and sleeping
most of the night (well, not most I guess...) I'm using the machine
perhaps 4-5 hours a day at best, many times only 1-2 hours a day.
In this scenario, is it better to power the machine down for the
night/workday most of the time, and just power it up for a few hours a
day, or should I leave it on all the time?
I'm aware of the processes Linux needs to run periodically at night to
remain up-to-date (like makewhatis, etc), so I'd leave it on overnight
perhaps once a week for that purpose.
Really it gets down to the longevity of the hard drive and power supply,
the theory being that the fans/drive motors take the most abuse during
spinup and spindown relative to remaining at a constant speed, so at some
point the wear and tear accumulated by always leaving them on is less
than it would be subjecting them to daily power-ups and power-downs.
I've heard that the tradeoff is at about 8 hours or so - that is, if the
machine will be used 8 or more hours a day then it's better just to leave
it on all the time, whereas lesser usage would indicate turning it off
during downtime.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Eric.
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