SSD use

Stoke

neilmcl wrote: »

Do you?

No need for an answer, it's abundantly clear you don't. Why is it that anyone running linux automatically believes they're a computer systems expert!

Lets face it the main reason for keeping a computer switched on is convenience, nothing more, however, as has been explained there are very good reasons for rebooting it every now and then.

Also, in answer to Carrot007, logging on and off isn't "just as good".

Never said that I was an expert. My many years commercial experience in low level software engineering says I'm an expert you buffoon. Including kernel development etc etc.

"Lets face it the main reason for keeping a computer switched on is convenience, nothing more"
Yeah........ except every time you switch off your computer, the hot components cool and contract. Then you switch it on a few hours later, and those components heat up and expand again. Someone doesn't have a scooby how operating systems work...... or physics, right Neil??

Really, I couldn't give a damn what you do with your £300 PC World machine. If you want it to last longer, then I suggest you shut it down less frequently if you're using it like a power user. It all depends on your usage style, but the increase wear and tear WILL eventually cause component failure. :-)

Stoke

neilmcl wrote: »

What "massive increase in wear and tear", total garbage, and you still haven't provided any evidence that shutting down for any length of time does more harm than good.

I never said that shutting it down will cause harm. I've disputed Andy's claim that rebooting/shutting it down, will somehow give you a magic performance boost that takes your knackered Pentium 4 into the levels of an i5. If you're that desperate for a performance boost, then I suggest buying some more RAM, a better processor, an SSD etc etc. You're talking minuscule performance improvements, the likes of which people reckon they can get by cleaning their registry using CC Cleaner (your favourite tool?).

If you run your computer from 8am to 10pm at night, there is simply no point in switching it off for another 10 hours. You might as well let it run, with the monitor off, in a low powered clock frequency as any good operating system will do when you're not using it. That will ramp down the heat a bit but not cause any significant wear to the components. Modern computers are also significantly more efficient than they used to be.

If you don't use your computer for 3 or 4 days at a time then yes, I can see the logic in switching off, but for those who use their machines every day (i.e. power users) they might be doing more harm than good.

As I said, I don't really care. My machines last for bloody ages, and I know why

AndyPix

almillar

Except from the massive increase in wear and tear?

The question asked was specific to SSD - more 'wear and tear' will happen if you leave that running all night, instead of being switched off.

I've disputed Andy's claim that rebooting/shutting it down, will somehow give you a magic performance boost that takes your knackered Pentium 4 into the levels of an i5

He made nothing approaching that kind of claim. Read again.

Turning on and off causes power spikes through electrical components, sure, and spinning up/down hard drives and the motors in fans causes wear too, but you're living in an old world. Hard drives spin down to save energy all the time anyway, so unless you're running servers, the COST of running the computer (£ and to the environment) is greater than the extra 'wear' you give the components.

pmartin86

I don't normaly comment on these sort of debates, but I gotta say, Stoke, you've portayed yourself as an elitist !!!!!

Edit: also, for reference, ive got a PC that I use daily as a fileserver, it shuts itself fof at midnight every night and boots itself up at 8AM every morning (wake on LAN if your interested) - This was a repurpoused office machine that saw 4 years of monday-friday use before I had it, and has seen over 4 more years of my apparant massive hardware abuse with its shutdown and boot shedule, funnily enough, its still going well.

neilmcl

pmartin86 wrote: »

I don't normaly comment on these sort of debates, but I gotta say, Stoke, you've portayed yourself as an elitist !!!!!

Not the word I'd use, but hey

Biggles

Stoke wrote: »

Look guys, just reboot your computer, Andy the Microsoft guy says so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4tiWdIhC64

That link isn't to 'Andy the Microsoft guy', it's to an Indian Dell advert offering tech support to the UK despite quoting a US phone number. That's Dell all over.....

Stoke wrote: »

And I would respond by saying any program that hasn't released it's memory correctly should be programmed correctly. Alternatively, you can free the memory by manually closing those programs

Such as Windows, maybe?

Stoke

Biggles wrote: »

That link isn't to 'Andy the Microsoft guy', it's to an Indian Dell advert offering tech support to the UK despite quoting a US phone number. That's Dell all over.....

Such as Windows, maybe?

Haven't used Windows in years. Wouldn't know if it's programmed correctly or not, but Windows 7 seemed to be a very good example of an OS the last time I used it.... Free of memory leaks

Anyway, I've had my say, clearly people don't agree. I was talking about components expanding and contracting as opposed to spin ups on HDD's etc, but there we go.

Good debate, debate over. Do what you feel is best

securityguy

Since someone upthread is claiming they know about operating systems, I'll just point out I am in fact Dr Security Guy, my PhD being in computer science. I've been a Unix and a Linux kernel developer and taught postgrad operating system courses.

The main reason to leave modern machines running is that they often have large amounts of RAM and over time build up a good cache, based on extensive experience of the working set, which means that you are more likely as time goes by for the page you need to be in RAM than on disk. And even though SSDs are fast, RAM is a lot faster. Even on machines with fast PCIe SSDs, cycle times are measured in 10s of microseconds, whereas RAM cycle times are a few tens of nanoseconds. If you're starting a program, it's going to have to fetch all the text from disk, and then do the work involved in getting it into RAM (which is non-trivial, as setting up page tables isn't cheap), instead of just using it in situ. Starting a program the second time is faster than starting the first time if the machine has sufficient RAM (and given how cheap it is, why wouldn't it?) and not shutting it down in the first place is even faster.

The same applies, with small differences, to your files: once the machine has been running for a while, all the files you're using regularly are available in RAM and being flushed back to disk only when they change, whereas if the machine has been turned off, they all have to come from disk.

The virtual memory subsystem does the former, the filesystem (which may or may not be intimately related to the VM subsystem, depending on which OS you are using) does the latter.

The nonsense about "memory leaks" is just that, nonsense. Unless you are working in a very restricted embedded environment, your machine has essentially unlimited swap space. Leaks in applications just cause pages to be slowly retired to swap space, from whence they never return. Leaks in kernel memory are more serious but are frank bugs, and get fixed quickly: Windows, Linux and commercial Unixes are all used in server environments with uptimes measured in years (I've run Unix boxes for five years between reboots, and these days with virtualisation guest operating systems aren't even restarted to move hardware platform, so any leaks would persist over even that event).

Restarting machines flushes caches. For consumers it flushes RAM caches, and for prosumers is also loses the metadata associated with things like Readyboost (is that still a thing?) and Fusion drives (which definitely are a thing). All that stuff has to be rebuilt. Like most people, I don't reboot my laptop from one OS update to the next, I just sleep it, and the idea that rebooting would actually benefit it is just silly. If I want to save power, I just sleep the machine, or to take the power away I hibernate it. Restart from hibernation is faster than booting (usually) and the machine is in a better state faster (always).

bsod

back to school if you think memory leaks and runaway processes have no impact on performance

everyone with any experience knows a reboot cures a suddenly slow computer, unix or windows There is no reason to leave them on overnight, that is just a silly waste of electricity.

They'll continue to work in the morning when you hit the on switch, in the same way the radio, the toaster and the kettle does

as for the caching malarkey, it reads like a microsoft publicity statement for a new OS, the one that's going to be the fastest Windows yet, but never is. If caching was so effective, an ssd wouldn't make any difference, but it does.