Electricity Monitors - Is there really a need for them?

[Jethro]

I worked for a large (300+ employees) organisation in the past. One of the directors wanted to "go green" and demanded all desktops got switched off at night.

Within a week, we were experiencing 15+ minutes bootups, as *all* the machines decided they needed to do a Windows update at the same time. OK, some profile management could have cured that. However we started seeing a spike in machine failures, as - guess what - the shock of on- off-on cycling started to hit PSUs and in some cases HDDs.

Whatever we "saved" in electricity, we pissed away in maintenance costs ... to say nothing of how much carbon it took to manufacture the new components.

[Clive George]

Interesting. My employer is rather larger than yours, and encourages computers to be switched off at night. However we may buy more reliable machines, since we don't see the problems you suggest with failures.

[Huge]

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahah. For "large", read "small".

[tim....]

That's rubbish

the on-off cycling is going to cause failures in the three-four year time scale (if that). You are not going to see a spike in failures because of a two week experiment!

tim

[Andy Burns]

Speaking from experience (though several years ago when hard disks were much smaller, slower and tended to have different problems to today such as stiction and generally tending to make odd noises when they were about to fail) ...

Machines that had got used to being on 24x7 with only very brief downtime, had a tendency to fail when turned off, even just for a few hours to re-organise the server room - still makes me quite nervous and keen to have known good backups before moving servers.

[<me9]

You may if they have already been running (on a wing and a prayer) for years.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh yes. been there done that.

WE also go occasional main supply fuses blowing as the switch on surges....

[The Natural Philosopher]

machis are a bit better these days.

[Andy Champ]

OK, I'm out of date, but when I worked at ICL some years ago the numbers we got suggested leave on overnight, turn off at weekends for best reliability.

The power management facilities of modern machines (especially spin down discs when idle) must surely affect this conclusion.

Andy

[Stephen]

Please may I ask, do they kill by starting fires or by electrocution? My guess is fires? When the fire brigade test them in the winter, what do they do? Is it a visual inspection or do they hook up some sort of meter to measure resistance or test the insulation or some such?

Thanks, Stephen.