On 16 Apr 2010 02:19:41 GMT, Nicholas Dreyer
wrote:

On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:13:35 -0400, kony wrote:


... but there is supporting evidence. It depends on the particular
weakness of the entire *system* and by system I also mean the power
grid.

Basically the evidence comes from tracing fault modes, looking at dead
equipment rather than formal testing long term which serves little use -
by the time meaningful data was a accumulated nobody wants to build a
new system with old parts and it would have to be based on the
contemporary tech of the time as merely deciding a "disk drive" is a
"disk drive" is not enough, the designs change too much over the years
to combat failure modes as much as the design budget will allow.

Will it be subject to significant power spikes? IF so then certainly
turning it off at a power strip will reduce # of events seen on average.

Leaving it running tends to be most problematic if it uses poor
capacitors or fans so their lifespan elapses before the viable lifespan
of the system is up. Turning it off tends to wear out the battery
faster. Thermal shock is not much of a consideration though, if we
concede it will not damage equipment signficantl within its viable
lifespan which seems to be the case with all but the rare instances of
manufacturing solder pad defects or in-chip solder bump defects as seen
with certain chipsets in recent history.

Thanks for the great insights. Now I'm leaning towards turning off power
supply completely again!


Up to you, but personally I never turn equipment off at the
wall and don't have any problem with doing so. It uses a
single-digit # of watts per system but the last power surge
fault I saw was with a printer I leave on because it's a
networked printer that is inconvenient to go turn off when
it would be accessed by any random system on-site.

Before that it was a network switch which also never gets
turned off for similar reasons, a surge when through it and
fried a port on it and a network adapter in a client system.

Also in past years I'd found that some systems require a
power reset if they come back on from power off, rather than
leaving mains on all the time, so to me the chance of
failure is lower than I deem the risk of leaving power
connected.