Many restarts damage hard drive?

[MDRapp]

Hi All! Maybe someone in this Lounge can settle this issue once and for all. My brother restarts after installing a new application, after uninstalling an application, after a defrag, after a backup, you name it. In his mind, no task is too trivial not to require a restart. I don't exactly know what he thinks a restart does, but I maintain that he's generally wasting his time, and his hard drive will pay the price much too soon. Does anyone have any opinions one way or the other?
Thanks for any input.
Mike Rapp
(FourEyes)

[Just Plain Fred]

Does anyone have any opinions one way or the other?
Thanks for any input.

Mike,
Hello....There are some program updates that require this "Restart" Also when installing or doing a repair of some software...Reason being that If the (system C: HD) is "active" the program can't have access to change things around to install itself completely. As far a "Trashing the HD " Yes any mechanical device is "Stressed" when powered up .... But this argument has those on both sides ...Bottom line is Sometimes it's required ...but not in every instance... Regards Fred

[Medico]

My PCs get shut down each night, whenever an update needs the restart as Fred mentioned, and when ever something unexpected happens that I feel may be helped by a restart. Your brother may be going overboard, but he feels more comfortable doing this so just let him. I do things with my PCs that others here would say the same about. That's why we call these things personal computers.

[cafed00d]

There are some cases where I have been bit by problems when I didn't reboot after installing or uninstalling an application. Therefore I now usually reboot my PC after uninstalling any application(s), especially before installing new applications. Other applications where I know they will want to do a reboot, I wait until just before I shutdown the PC anyway.

As far as the wear-and-tear on hard drives goes, that debate has gone on for ages, yet no-one has offered definitive proof one way or the other as to which is best: leave the PC running or shut to down occasionally (e.g., at the end f each day). But drives have become much more reliable than what they were 20 or 30 years ago. And consider this: drives nowadays automatically power down if they are not being used. I notice this on my desktop when I decide to access drive I haven't used in a while and have to wait 10-15 seconds for the drive to spin back up. In all, I suspect that the computer will have to be replaced long before the drive gives out.

[pcunite]

Thermo expansion is the danger to computer components ... a restart is not much risk.

[Just Plain Fred]

Thermo expansion is the danger to computer components ... a restart is not much risk.

pcunite,
It's a mechanical device (HD).... Regards Fred

[ruirib]

If I had to count the times my computer experienced an hardware failure, the huge majority was always after a restart initiated by me. I restart my computers as rarely as possible and other than required restarts (Windows update, certain application installations requiring it) I only restart it if them if I have a problem that I think may be solved by a restart.

[CLiNT]

It sounds as if he is going a little bit overboard on his habbit of restarting, but I don't think it will be anymore detrimental;
1. Your typically not getting any more or less disk activity than any other usage, except maybe over use of defragmenting utilities.
2. As others have pointed out, component thermal wear will not be an issue.

I've had a habbit of doing that in XP, mainly to flush the memory & free resources, but it probably isn't needed so much in newer hardware and operating systems.
I have never encountered any type of restart problem specifically as a result of such a habbit.

[Banyarola]

I usually leave my PC on during the day and sometimes put it to sleep or turn it off if I'm going to be busy doing something else that will keep me away from the computer.

I would estimate I do about 3 or 4 cold boot restarts during the day.

[kenredman]

It's not so much the number of restarts: it's the mechanism. If you let Windoze shut itself down then restart, you'll (usually) be fine. If you get impatient and hit the power button/pull the plug etc, then you run a serious risk of damaging your hard-drive either by head crashes (although modern drives are pretty good this way: they lift and park the heads as soon as the power fails) or by corrupting files because Windoze was in the middle of writing a vital file when you killed it. If it happened to be writing to the registry or a start-up file then you may render your PC unbootable (been there, done that...)

Moral is: shut down using the correct mechanism and don't get impatient...

[sjors]

Hi all,
I'd like to hear a comment on this issue from the hd manufacturers. Or don't they read this lounge? :-(

grtz Sjors

[Banyarola]

I remember back in the DOS days I used a program called PARK which I would run before shutting down to park the heads...

[kermidge]

It's not the hard drive you ought to be especially concerned about - it's the stress to the whole system.

I reboot only when absolutely needed - whether it's a kernel update, new video driver, or one of my own damfool mistakes. That said, I think the longest uptime was only three months or so. Part of my reason for leaving the system on is participating in World Community Grid - the more crunching time, the better.

Now that I think back, with XP, I re-started once a week as part of normal maintenance. I run it now as a virtual machine, so I don't think re-boots there are an issue.

[paulbyr]

I was interested in the responses and surprised that even now there is no definitive answer to this "age old" question. I date back to when a 300MB disk drive was about 3' by 3' and failed about every year or sooner if there were lightning storms. Then, wow, someone invented the "Winchester" disk (what we now call HD) that had, as I recall, 10,000 hrs MTTF (mean time to failure). The MTTF used to be published as part of the advertising by manufacturers. The last time I saw MTTF published, I think, showed MTTF of 40,000 hours. I bet it is still in the spec sheets from WD and Seagate.

Bottom line, I believe that after your HD as been cycled on and off for a few weeks, it may last about 5 years unless you bang it WHEN IT's RUNNING.

[nate01pa]

Are you talking about a cold boot (computer turned off and then restarted) or a warm boot (computer not powered off)? A warm boot will not power down the HD.