Restarting computer equipment
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I believe that a computer that is turned off is less likely to have data corruption/loss during mid-night thunderstorm -- mine are always powered off when work is done. The USA Midwest can have impressive night time thunderstorms.
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Ok, so I got me some new laptops and was looking for suggestions/opinions on restart/shutdown. And lets throw the Docks in too- I have one USB-C dock and another that is Thunderbolt; can these benefit from occasional power downs? Currently I hibernate the machine, leave the monitors on, and unplug the docks over the weekend.
Director of Transmogrification Services Shinobi of Query Language Master of Yoda Conditional
My laptop is used strictly on trips as a portable substitute for my desktop, so it gets powered up and down each time I use it. However, my company makes products that are based on Windows CE (6.0, in our case), and that OS has counters involved in timing that overflow about every 49 days, so our User Manual recommends power cycling the unit at least once a month. If the software is written correctly, that overflow can be handled, but I learned years ago to assume that software is never written correctly.
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Won't help much if it's powered off, but still plugged into the wall, will it? Or is the primary concern brownouts? In which case, this is what a good UPS is for.
Agreed. The small air gap of an open switch adds some protection. I unplug when I know bad storms are roaming around.
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Ok, so I got me some new laptops and was looking for suggestions/opinions on restart/shutdown. And lets throw the Docks in too- I have one USB-C dock and another that is Thunderbolt; can these benefit from occasional power downs? Currently I hibernate the machine, leave the monitors on, and unplug the docks over the weekend.
Director of Transmogrification Services Shinobi of Query Language Master of Yoda Conditional
I seldom power off any of my computers, but I do a reboot usually about every week-ten days (more on Windows machines, less on Linux). I will power off/unplug during a severe electrical storm if I am around because, while I am protected by surge protection and a UPS, a close-in lightning strike can overload a surge protector or UPS. (I live on top of a ridge, surround by trees, two of which have been struck in the last 20 years.) I am against powering off machines. Studies have shown that many chip failures occur due to the thermal stress induced by the warm-up/cool down cycle. This, of course, is dependent on the chip construction.
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MadMyche wrote:
Currently I hibernate the machine
Be really careful with hibernate. I'm one of the thousands of people whose laptop system drive suddenly found itself in a RAW state, because of flaws in the hibernate process. There's no recovery from that; you have to repartition and format the drive (after you've used disk tools to recover umpty-million unnamed files from it). Just put it to sleep. the average laptop will sleep on battery for an immense length of time, so it's not going to land you with a huge power bill if it (or the dock) is plugged in.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
In Windows 10 - the default shutdown is in fact hibernate. If you doubt this, do a search for "enable fast start up". Here's a link to get you started. The Pros and Cons of Windows 10’s “Fast Startup” Mode[^] I find that I need to restart every now and then because docking and undocking on my machine causes Windows to lose it's marbles. Slowly it begins not to redraw sections of the screen, starting with menu's. If it was Windows 3.1 I'd describe it as running out of resources. Amazing how far we've come.