Desktops forum: What's the best for a PC life: Sleep, hibernate, or shutdown?

OR sleep, it's not a security issue, as nothing can happen, unless it powers back up remotely from a signal that comes in, which is highly unlikely, especially if you have proper security measures in place. You also should turn off remote support in this scenario, since you can always turn it back on if you need to.
As to whether to power down for other than saving line power, it makes not a bit of difference nowadays.
We have a home PC that has been running pretty much constantly for 8 years, and no problems. Most people replace their computers much more often than that.
Hibernate, rather than sleep, actually puts much more stress on a system, and I tend to avoid it because it does so many write cycles to the drive, taking forever to finish. It does, however, put your data from current session to the drive rather than residing in memory, so that one is personal choice.
Sleep is much faster if that's a consideration (pretty much instant on, instead of waiting.)
Consider, also, that if you have automatic updates turned on, or defrag or an antivirus system scan scheduled for the middle of the night, that these tasks won't happen if you turn it off. That, nowadays is the single most important consideration for leaving the computer fully powered up. If you know when updates, defrag, and system scans are scheduled, you could leave the computer on at those times, and shut down other nights to save power.
My father used to shut his Windows 98 computer down whenever he wasn't using it, and his filesystem was completely screwed up from this, as these tasks never occurred, or tried to run in background when he was using the computer the most heavily. He complained the unit was slow and buggy. I told him, leave it on, and the three tasks mentioned would then be able to be performed when he wasn't using it, and the speed and reliability vastly improved!
Basically, however, for the typical user, there are times when you need to leave it on, updates, defrag, and system scan. With modern computers this whole issue isn't so much of a consideration, but if you still have a computer 10 or more years old, you probably need to pick and chose when to leave it on, unless you are using it as a server that needs to be constantly available.
Typically, however, if you need to store files on a common drive, an external hard drive is a much better option for a home user, and they are very cheap, 500 GB for $50 or so, rather than running a power supply and all the associated hardware (and vulnerable software) for a laptop or tower.
Hope this helps someone out there.

Using the computer as a vacuum cleaner day and night (throught the fans) and not keeping the "dust bag (called "PC")" clean is the main reason for failures so the more time the PC is on the more time is needed for servicing to avoid fatal overheating.

Andre's question is about HARDWARE. What does the OS that hardware runs have to do with it?

Granted Win 8 IS likely going to be a different animal altogether (except, probably, under the hood) ....may even not have the option to 'Sleep' or 'Hibernate' at all ....who knows for sure what the Final Release will include or exclude at this point? And, again, what does that have to do with the longevity of hardware?

If you are asking about "hardware" then the same axioms "for" and "against" leaving a computer on 24/7 do apply. If you are asking about the operating systems - Windows vs OSX - then the rules regarding indexing and file swap or any other windows related behind the scenes processes are different. In my opinion the Apple OSX is much more stable than the current Windows OS - however that may be changing with Windows 8. I speak from my own experience as I use both Win7 and the latest OSX version of Apple's operating system on my iMac and MBP. I hope this answers your question.

Posting questions in a POLL QUESTION is rarely answered well. Try a new post in your pick of forums at
http://forums.cnet.com/

I have always kept my computers on as they function and work better. The last thread says it better than i ever could.
It does occasionally require a reboot when something goes wrong; otherwise, leave it on.

w_tom, I'm not sure I follow you. If power cycling will lead to a failure in 39 years, then your logic seems to lead to the conclusion that power cycling is NOT a factor in this discussion. I doubt that any of us will still be using the same computer in 39 years. You seem to be saying that turning the computer on/off will not harm it significantly during the expected useful life of a computer. I agree. I've been turning my computer off every night ever since my first computer, which was a Commodore 64. All my computers have outlived their usefulness, meaning that they were still running when I replaced them with a newer model. I've lost a couple of power supplies and a couple of hard drives, but those all died after 4-5 years of use. Those items wear out eventually. Meanwhile, I've lost several electronic devices to lightning surges, so I have all my computer gear on a BackUPS Pro, AND I switch off the power strip every night. Someone else mentioned having their whole house on a surge protector, and I think that's even better. Protecting your gear from voltage spikes and excessive heat is far more important than if you power it off each evening versus using sleep mode or hibernation.

I suppose it is your choice. I was of the opinion that Shut down was the best, but then
I learned to "Hibernate" my machine -- If I was in the middle of something but had to
leave suddenly, when I got back it would be there....which was great! Basically, it will
shut down but remember exactly where you were and restore you to that point. Sleep
consumes more energy as it doesn't shut down completely, and forgets where it was.

I have been using PCs since 1983, starting with an actual IBM PC, at home and work. I don't know what studies have been done on reliability, but my own experience spanning nearly 30 years (I am feeling particularly old now), the component that fails most frequently by far is the hard disk. This shouldn't be surprising considering their precise mechanisms in addition to electronics.

The next most frequent is an optical drive, such as a DVD or CD drive. My guess is mechanical failure.

The next most frequent is the display. I have had CRTs, LCDs, and video cards fail. It seems that CRTs are no longer used but I have had several fail. I have seen three LCDs fail. One's backlight failed. It was a fluorescent backlight, not an LED. One failed mechanically. One of the hinges of a laptop's display broke. I never had the third failing LCD diagnosed. I have had three video cards go bad: 2 desktop and 1 in a laptop. It is my guess that these cards ran hot since they didn't have fans and they were high performance cards. There have been studies showing that heat is a major factor in reducing the life of an IC.

I have had one power supply failure in a desktop PC.

I have had one USB thumbdrive go bad, but it went bad after using it only a few times. It was probably defective to begin with.

I have never had any other components fail ever and I am a fairly heavy user.

So, from my experience, I doubt if there is any practical difference in PC life between sleep, hibernate, and shutdown. But I will mention that I have had waking from sleep crashing the most often by far. Waking from hibernate crashes sometimes. Booting from having shutdown does fail occasionally but far less often than from hibernate.

Screen savers peg the CPU at %100. What do you think that does to it? From Microsoft TechNet "Screensaver Tip Reduces CPU Cycle Waste"

That may be an older article, but it holds just a true today as it did when first written.

BTW: I have had "Updates" shut off for years. When they come out I wait just long enough to see that they aren't causing problems (as they have been notorious for doing) and then install them manually. If this was NOT a good thing to do then >thousands+ IT departments around the world would not be doing the very same thing in one way or another.

We've had a problem where Windows does the automatic downloads for the automatic update and then the computer goes into sleep mode and when we awaken the computer, we sometimes turn it off. It so happened that it downloaded the updates before the sleep mode and when we shut it off, it updated the computer but the operating system hangs so that the computer never shut off correctly for a while.

Don't listen to dell it will lessen the life of your computer. Keep it running all the time and read these replies for answers. I believe you never run sleep or hibernate or screen turn off, just make sure you run screensaver.

I only use Dell computers and their customer service give you wrong the information because they don't build the computers.

I had the 'turn off/leave it on' argument with an IT co-worker when I was doing technical support| I favoured turning it off: save electricity, the power supply, the screen, the hard drive. He isnsited that once up to operating temperature, a PC should be left on 24/7. His computer caught fire. Coincidence?

Your best option is to let it rest and save a tree or lump of coal. there's no downside to the computer being off. As for life expectancy, you'll likely upgrade long before your computer gets 'old'.

A)Can some body tell me how much electricity consumption one can save in one hour in
1)sleep mode
2)hibernate
3)shutdown

B)How much electricity is consumed in one hour when the PC is on.

I, too, have several decades of electronics engineering experience and it is the temperature cycling, as webnician said, that kills the electronics. I have personal experience with this --

I worked on a project that used some large DEC computers (yes, I'm old) with 1000's of integrated circuits. DEC specified that they should NEVER be powered down, except by their repair technician. When we asked why, they said it was for reliability. Our project used nearly as many IC's in one system as a DEC computer; our managers insisted that they be shutdown over the weekends. Near the end of the project, after the hardware design problems were ironed out, we would spend most of Monday and some of Tuesday repairing our 12 systems. Our management was upset and didn't know what to do about this problem. We pointed out that the DEC computers were never shut off and they worked fine on Monday. Finally, management relented and left our systems up over the weekend -- no failures on Monday morning. That was the end of turning off the systems, except for repairs -- which were now much less frequent than before.

I'm sure there were some of our boards that never broke with the on/off cycling, just as there are computers that don't break with on/off cycling as well, but if you want to improve your odds, don't power all the way down. One good thing about sleep mode is that it keeps some power going to the motherboard -- and keeps the temperature from dropping down to room temperature. Minimize the thermal stresses to the IC wire bonds (from the silicon chip to the IC package) and the solder joints (pc board to IC package) and you will greatly increase your computer's chances of staying alive. If I weren't concerned about my electric bill (as Andre G. says he isn't), I'd leave mine running 100% 24/7/365. I use sleep mode and so far, that seems to be doing OK.