Laptop Users: Close the Cover
Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:06AM EST
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I'm guilty of leaving my notebook PC running endlessly. Perhaps you are too. I've had I've had two separate hard disk crashes this year on two separate notebook PCs. And my husband's small company just had a drive failure on a laptop, too. All of the laptops in question were between two and three years old.
The bottom line seems to be that after two or three years, hard disk failure in laptops is pretty common, at least based on my small sample.
So here's what I'd strongly recommend for all laptop users. Close the cover of your machine when you're not using it. This will put it into hibernate, sleep, or shutdown mode depending on how you've set up those options on your PC. Closing the cover stops the disk from spinning constantly. Even heavy laptop users probably only use their machines 30-50 hours a week. But there are 168 hours in a week, so if your PC is shut and the hard drive is not spinning when not in use, you should see at least three times the lifetime from your hard disk. Over time that could be the difference between failure after three years and failure after nine years!
Think my math is overly optimistic? Let me know if you've seen the same type of failures and successes. Seems like a big payoff for doing something as simple as closing the cover, doesn't it?
For more:
On the various options on turning off your PC.
Comments on Laptop Users: Close the Cover
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2 Posted by ytech_robinraskin on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:58PM EDT Report Abuse
Hmmm.. maybe you could talk to my husband? He swears I'm a killer of drives because I'm always leaving them on. Great idea to put some pressure on laptop vendors to make an always on that doesn't do wear and tear damage (and is energy efficient, too?). I'm all ears. -- Robin
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3 Posted by kaare_yah on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:46PM EDT Report Abuse
Hi - I'm Robin's aforementioned husband. If you're using the laptop, by all means keep all those connections going. That's what I do. But when you aren't going to be active for a few hours, my advice is to shut it down and give the HD a break. On my laptop, my time to resume from hibernation is under a minute, including restoring the wifi, and getting fresh Skype status, etc. When I return from a meeting and get back to work, the time the laptop spends to 'get ready' is less than the time I spend to 'get focused'. Plus, shutting the lid saves a little power, always a good thing. I'm not here to apologize for the manufacturers, but I don't think most current laptops were designed with 24x7 in mind. Until they are built for 24x7, I'm going to give mine a break when I can. HD replacement is a whole lot more disruptive to me than shutting the cover. But obviously it's a personal choice. Good Luck! --Kaare
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4 Posted by ed_stumpy on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:52PM EDT Report Abuse
Another simpler suggetsion is to set your hard drives to turn off after a certain amount of time if your computer is idle. Under Control panel, choose Display Properties, then Screen saver, then click the power button. Now you can customize the time-out of your hard-drive and dsiplay, saving both from burn out. The great thing about shutting down the hard drives like this is that they "wake up" as soon as you hit any key.
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5 Posted by buck2239 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:15PM EDT Report Abuse
Hello all, my name is Buck. I'm a IT profesional. I work for a large corperation. And I see my fair share of hard drive crashes. Unfortunately laptop fairures are an all too common thing. But if you look at the life of the laptop you can see why the hard drive is going to last from 2 to 3 years. An average desktop unit hard drive is exspected to last up to 5 years. When you factor in that the laptop get bounced around in transit, scanned at airports, dropped, spilled on, people smashing them (and yes I have seen that happen), 2 to 3 years is a reasonal lifespan for a laptop. Not to mention you don't see people taking a desktop home. And pertaining to the forementioned closing the lid, unless it goes into hibernate and not stand by (stand by being default in our models), turning off the hard drive in my opinion will save the life of your hard drive. Less wear and tear due to not accessing the drive. And yes it is more convienent to shut down and power up than to lose your PC for a full day or more. Not to mention data and exspencive data recovery which can cost up to $2000 a pop. Another way to save the life of your drive and system is if you have a docking station always shut it down. Many people say I don't have time. Well take a minute will save you from taking a day to a week or more with out your system because you fried it instead of doing it properly. - Buck
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6 Posted by keaahr on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:48PM EDT Report Abuse
As a dabbler in PC repair(no formal training, I just build my own so I know what usually works) I have an additional suggestion. As well as closing the laptop, buy a laptop chiller pad, or lapdesk. These items add the the laptops own fans to help cool it, and they keep the laptops fans from getting blocked by the things people set them on. So your friends can't IM you for a while? Hello, thats what email, blogs, and half a dozen other things are for. If its that important that someone contact you, why don't they just call? That excuse sounds like someone who needs to turn off the system anyway. I usually shut down my laptop when I am not actively using it. As for the second comment....invest in a good desktop and a synch cable. If you have the laptop docked to make it a desktop, then you may as well use a desktop. I hope we see more hints like this one on saving money by keeping things going.
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7 Posted by hsueh010 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:21PM EDT Report Abuse
Hmmm. I would think laptop drives wear out faster because of the on-off cycle and the energy conservation to spin down the drive and spin up the drive frequently. I mean most people don't continueously access the hard drive once the program is in memory. I would think the on-off cycling would be more hazardious to the drive.
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8 Posted by ryan_lorentzen on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:57PM EDT Report Abuse
I have gateway laptop that I've had for about 2 and a half years and it crashed about a week ago and it was due to leaving it on constantly, I would leave my laptop on for weeks at a time. So I agree with the putting your laptop into hibernation, it takes maybe 3 seconds to start back up. If you are willing to risk everything on your computer to stay on AIM, then go ahead. Also laptops are a fairly new technology, give the tech guys a break, they can only make so many advances in such little time. Another reason my laptop crashed because it was dirty inside, it had a buildup of dust making it overheat which also caused damage to the hard drive. So I would clean them every few months.
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9 Posted by abbogus on Thu Sep 3, 2009 2:43PM EDT Report Abuse
I am 100% behind keaahr's comment. The heat factors within a laptop are astounding. The laptop my wife uses is very hot - you can almost keep tea warm from the fan exhaust! We added a laptop chill pad to her laptop (after I got one for my laptop) and it's amazing. The thing is, even when powered up by a plug, the fans are thermostatically controlled, they are prone to not coming on until needed. Which might be too late. Laptop harddrives are disposable. Let's be honest here. A new one is cheap. The real fix is to have a good backup at all times. Our laptops are both backed up to my desktop (the server, for the lack of a better term). From there, I can back up to dual layer DVD. If you live in a high risk disaster area (we live in SoCal), keeping a copy of a backup in a safe deposit box is cheap insurance. The real lesson here is backup, backup, backup. Get a jump drive and keep things there, and transfer them to another machine, or use a CD/DVD to store things more perminantly.
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10 Posted by ut_dragon on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:30PM EDT Report Abuse
I closed my laptop each time I was done, but both of my died between 2 and 3 years anyway. Dang HPs and Compaqs.
1 Posted by simoncohen69 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 9:23PM EDT Report Abuse
If my laptop went into suspend everytime i closed the cover, it would drive me nuts - not to mention the lost VPN connection, appearing offline to IM buddies etc. Plus, this simply wouldn;t work for people who work on docked laptops with external kb/mon/mouse. I think the onus should be on drive manufacturers and software vendors to figure out how to extend drive life given that most computers these days are marketed on the promise of "always on" media centres -laptops included.