Is it save to put computer to sleep every night?

[jtcb]

Hi. I just completed my new build. I am running Win7. I sleep the PC at night when I go to bed and the next morning I wake it up and it instantly turn on and I love it. I have a question regarding it. Is it save to set the PC to sleep or is it better off just turning it off? Will it do any harm to any hardware? I am sure everything is turn off when it is in sleep mode. I don't hear any fan spinning. I have a SSD boot drive and a WD Green data drive.

[ilya]

Theoretically, it should take years off the longevity of your ssd.
Just don't enable hibernate on an ssd, they cold boot insanely fast anyhow.

[geokilla]

Of course it's not safe. You should be running Folding@Home on your new build! Post specs nao!

Haha seriously, I'm not sure if it'll have any effect on the SSD, but I believe it's pretty safe to put the computer to sleep overall. Why not just shut it down instead?

[LarkStarr]

with an SSD, waking up to a fresh start of windows would be nice wouldn't it?

but no, definitely no detrimental side effects

[AmuseMe]

Ever since I started watercooling, I always turn if off completley, and turn the PSU switch off as well. May seem kind of crazy, but it only take like ten seconds to press power again. Im just playing it safe as I had a leak once while in hibernate once, and it shorted.

As to the actual question, I don't see how it can really effect anything.

[jtcb]

I have another question. I notice recently that whenever I shut down/restart the computer, there is a screen with icon in the middle of the screen and a message showing right before the "windows is shutting down" blue screen. I can't get the message to see what it is about. I try to press the pause key on the keyboard but can't. Any idea what that message might be about or how to pause that message screen?

[MrDiaz]

Is completely safe, computers weren't built to keep them turned off. Regarding the life cycle of the components, you are looking at 50 000 + hours of life. Some go even higher

Ok well I'm wondering how many posts are from people that actually use this feature or not. I've had IT friends relay that when they reboot/shutdown servers that are "always on" sometimes bad things happen and erroring to the side of caution isn't a bad thing; can't have it all though, sometimes powering down a server has to happen. Hense they all full back up their servers before a major shut down. Now I realize we aren't talking about a server but there are some people here that never turn their computers off so the reality isn't that much different. A computer is still a computer. I have personally seen 3 computers die from power downs from an "Always On" enviroment. The last one ran for 2.5 straight years and was only powered down during power failures or to be cleaned. I have photos of the dead capacitors somewhere. You will most definately shorten the lifespan of anything in constant use compared to something that is only powered on when needed. Arguing this point is a complete waste of time and effort...

2/ I have used the hibernate option in XP media center edtion and it has recently come to my attention that this slowly but surely competely ruins the OS install. Without fail I have had to re-install the OS once per year for the last 4 years straight hense the last round has had the hibernate option completely disabled... screw that noise.

3/ Sleeping is good to save power obviously but you are relying on the hopes that between the time you sleep and wake up (split seconds) nothing gets corrupted. I reckon you are better off just power down the computer and like someone else stated as the SSD boots pretty fast anyway.... 2 second boot and possible future OS corruption or 10 second boot unlikely OS corruption... the choice would be simple for me.

I can tell you that I do not hibernate my HTPC any longer because the re-install process takes 2days + and then there's configuration bullshit to deal with after. This post is based on real world knowledge... it is not a guess or a suggestion.

[Sushi Warrior]

I usually put mine to sleep every night, I have so many programs open it is a pain to get logged back into everything and open PS and all that crap... but I turn it of at least 1-2 times a week due to crashes/not needing it for a full day.

[KeepSix]

I reboot several times a day, just cuz I can. Never used sleep/hibernate/whatever. I use old Raptor drives for my OS installs, and will do so until SSDs are affordable solutions. I can't help but wonder why anyone gives a darn about boot times under a few minutes. How busy are you guys? I'm not knocking progress, I just don't see (other than bragging rights) why a $1000 RAID setup that shaves a few seconds off my boot time is even worth considering, even for a business.