How often should you restart your PC?

[jinq-sea]

To be honest, now with SSDs, I turn my desktop off when I'm not using it (plus, it's greener). The Mac in the studio just goes to sleep when I am not using it, and only gets rebooted when Logic starts acting up...

[tbc]

people that never restart their windows machines explains the insane amount of malware infections....

[rowdy]

people that never restart their windows machines explains the insane amount of malware infections....

People running Windows machines in the first place explains the insane amount of malware infections ...

[daerid]

people that never restart their windows machines explains the insane amount of malware infections....

That's just plain not true. I rarely ever reboot my computer and strictly monitor all network traffic in and out of my router, as well as all processes running on my system (including using a couple tricks to expose rootkit-type processes). In over 15 years of working with and using computers, I've had precisely one infection (and that was 14 years ago).

[SpikeBolt]

people that never restart their windows machines explains the insane amount of malware infections....

People running Windows machines in the first place explains the insane amount of malware infections ...

people that never restart their windows machines explains the insane amount of malware infections....

That's just plain not true. I rarely ever reboot my computer and strictly monitor all network traffic in and out of my router, as well as all processes running on my system (including using a couple tricks to expose rootkit-type processes). In over 15 years of working with and using computers, I've had precisely one infection (and that was 14 years ago).

It is possible to spread malware to every OS, it's just less time consuming to produce it for the 90% of the people on earth. I own PC and Mac, lets try not to be biased about it

[Oobly]

Once a week is about right for Win7. Older builds of WinDoze I'd say daily.

Linux, you restart it when you upgrade the hardware.

That said, I don't leave my PC running, why waste the power? Unless it's winter and it's cold where you live and electricity is cheaper / as cheap as the other ways you warm your house.

[Geroximo]

Just ... Wow ... wtf !?

Why would you leave the computer running while not using it!?
Are you too lazy to turn it off?
Cannot wait 2 minutes for booting?
Don't know that this thing is using electricity, and you have to pay for it?

I'm turning the computer on when I need it, and I'm turning it off when I stop working on it (for a longer period of time, otherwise sleepmode)
Seems to be common sense to me ...

[tp4tissue]

Just ... Wow ... wtf !?

Why would you leave the computer running while not using it!?
Are you too lazy to turn it off?
Cannot wait 2 minutes for booting?
Don't know that this thing is using electricity, and you have to pay for it?

I'm turning the computer on when I need it, and I'm turning it off when I stop working on it (for a longer period of time, otherwise sleepmode)
Seems to be common sense to me ...

wellllllll.... 8 years ago.. it would've been quite wasteful to leave the PC on.

But... these days.. you're looking at less than 20 watt for some of the low power builds..  so... that really doesn't add up to much relative to the rest of your gizmos.

[davkol]

Ever heard of suspend to RAM/disk/both? What about remote connection? What about hardware designed to run 24/7?

[jamster]

I shut my home desktop down as soon as I know I wont need it for the next hour... kind of the same way I turn my water taps off after washing my hands. It sucks 80W at idle, not much but why burn the energy needlessly?

My work PC is on all the time for remote access. I turn off the monitors at the end of the day.

Low power home server in on 24x7 as it's regularly connected to a couple of other sites overseas. Burns 40W.

[meztek]

That means: I turn my computer off every night and back on the next day. If it weren't for the wife and kids, I would do the same for the modem and router.

I do the same thing, actually I only turn my computer on when I need to use it.  The electricity cost of keeping it on all the time when I am not even using it is too darn high.  Plus, then I'd be paying for something when I am not even using it.

P.S. I'm in my 20s, this is not an old man thing. Unless I'm actually a weird and paranoid young man and too young to realise it of course. 

[sethk_]

I restart mine once about a month, but the longest uptime I have gone was about 70 days. My dad was running a server in our basement on an old laptop and the longest it was up for was over 1000 days.

[Joey Quinn]

I have a hackintosh so if I don't boot OSX once a day it gets mad. 

[pro_LAPSE]

I restart daily.

that being said, older HDD's can take on quite a bit of wear and tear by going through thousands of heat cycles throughout their lives. But I bet the electricity bill will be more expensive for leaving it on than the cost of a new HDD.

[TacticalCoder]

Why would you leave the computer running while not using it!?

Because I'm a professional and it's my main tool and I don't want to waste time.  Although my system may "boot" in less than twenty seconds, I'd then need to: launch my favorite text editor + open all the files I was working on, launch my IDE (IntelliJ IDEA) + open all the files I was working on, launch the three browsers I'm using (in three different user accounts) + re-open all the tabs that were open, launch the VMs that are running, re-open the network connection to remote servers (SSH), etc. 

I could script all that to re-open automatically but it would take quite a while to come all back up.

Not to mention automated backup happening at night and being SCP'ed automatically to remote servers.

I've got an 80+ gold certified alim or whatever the norm is and my PC at full-speed (100% usage on all cores) is dissipating so few energy that it has a passive cooler (no fan).  It is so quiet while running that at first I'd sometimes turn it off thinking it was off, etc.  At idle that thing is consuming next to nothing.

By the way: I own a very old Nokia 6110 or something like that (a dumbphone).  That thing hardly consume any energy and can stay on for three weeks without needing to be plugged and is perfect for giving/receiving phone calls/text messages and is a fine alarm clock.  Why do you even own a smartphone? 

Regarding the tap water analogy: I think it actually makes a very strong case for leaving the PC idling with all its software / windows / tabs open instead of turning everything off ... When you turn it on you get water instantly.  Not after two minutes.  Not after twenty seconds. 

[jamster]

At a risk of going off on a tangent:

The tap analogy was mine. I was using it to try make a point not about convenience, but rather about using non-renewable resources- in a fair chunk of the developed world water overuse permanently damages underground aquafiers, similarly the bulk of our electricity comes from non renewable sources (70% of US power is from fossil fuels).

I guess a better analogy might be that I don't leave the *hot* water tap running all the time, just to save the 60 or so seconds it takes for hot water to start coming out the faucet (and that 60 seconds really does bug me!). My time has some value (I leave my work PC on, and at home I leave things like wifi on all the time), but at home I'm a little more relaxed, a little more concious of power bills, and a little more concious that I have kids who are going to inherit problems of my generation's creation.

Also, I kind of find the whole bootup and login process strangely relaxing (as long as it's SSD) at home. Yeah, I know that sounds weird.

[Computer-Lab in Basement]

Since I use my PC as a TeamSpeak server, an FTP server, and a web server, I try to keep it running at all times. Meaning I only restart if Steam is being a **** and won't launch my games. Which happens so frequently, I restart about once a week.

[XMIT]

Never, if I can help it. Some friends from college even started a company (KSplice, now an Oracle company) to apply Linux kernel updates in flight.

I don't want to start an uptime contest but my work Linux workstation tells me:

jsoltren@lonestar:~$ uptime
 11:06:12 up 225 days,  2:01, 17 users,  load average: 0.57, 1.16, 1.25

Granted, my employer pays the electric bill.

[pr0ximity]

Turn off when I go to bed, turn on after work/after I cook dinner, etc.

I have my MacBook Air floating around my apartment which is always doing whatever it does when the lid is closed, so I really use that a majority of the time.

The only thing that bugs me about it is from what I understand it is better for HDDs to spin continuously instead of start/stop regularly. However I haven't had any issues in years so maybe it's not so bad if they're kept running cool and under moderate load.

[tp4tissue]

Turn off when I go to bed, turn on after work/after I cook dinner, etc.

I have my MacBook Air floating around my apartment which is always doing whatever it does when the lid is closed, so I really use that a majority of the time.

The only thing that bugs me about it is from what I understand it is better for HDDs to spin continuously instead of start/stop regularly. However I haven't had any issues in years so maybe it's not so bad if they're kept running cool and under moderate load.

macbook air doesn't have a spinner, does it?

But.. the thing about the spinning drives is..   Heating and COoling isn't good,  and starting voltage isn't good for the circuits..

But.. my media drives will spin up 2 times per day total..  they're rated for 5000-10000 starts..  so it's gonna be a WHILE..

[pr0ximity]

macbook air doesn't have a spinner, does it?

But.. the thing about the spinning drives is..   Heating and COoling isn't good,  and starting voltage isn't good for the circuits..

But.. my media drives will spin up 2 times per day total..  they're rated for 5000-10000 starts..  so it's gonna be a WHILE..

\

Nah the MBA is an SSD, was talking about my desktop PC. Yeah with what they're rated for there probably isn't actually anything to worry about.

[HoffmanMyster]

macbook air doesn't have a spinner, does it?

But.. the thing about the spinning drives is..   Heating and COoling isn't good,  and starting voltage isn't good for the circuits..

But.. my media drives will spin up 2 times per day total..  they're rated for 5000-10000 starts..  so it's gonna be a WHILE..

\

Nah the MBA is an SSD, was talking about my desktop PC. Yeah with what they're rated for there probably isn't actually anything to worry about.

Yeah that's if you were to spin it down after every file retrieval, or such.  Once a day shutting it down isn't going to do anything.  It's similar to the idea that you're not supposed to start up your car too frequently, meaning every 20 minutes (or less maybe); once a day is fine.

Note: I am not an expert.

[Grill3dCh33z]

I seem to turn mine off every other night. The nights I don't turn it off, it goes into sleep mode after 3 to 4 hours (sometimes I have things downloading that I want to finish before I wake up).

I shut my monitor off every single time I get up from my chair though.