Sleep or Always On? Whats Your Settings?

[Johnf1285]

Yes HD failure is an issue that I've come to accept. I've been lucky to only deal with about 3 failed hard drives in my experience. I understand the importance of backing up. Always have a backup and a backup of the backup!

I always wonder about the people that post about their Mac Pro randomly shutting down and or not powering up... I just don't want to be one of those people a month after AppleCare expires that have a burnt out power supply or non working logic board. I guess there isn't much I can do?

But when I hear about 2006 Mac Pro's going strong, It makes me happy! Hell, even when I hear about Power Mac G4's still tickering away.... although they seemed to have a higher build quality back then..

 

[bobr1952]

but what do you guys do with the external hdds?

i would like to sleep my mac pro, but my ext hdds would still be powered.
should i sleep the mac pro, then turn off the ext hdds? would that hurt?

thanks!!

Doesn't your external sleep when your put your Mac to sleep? Not sure if they all do that but mine do not spin when my iMac is asleep. I have several different makes and models and all sleep.

For the record, that is what I do with my iMac when I am not using it for extended periods--or at night--I put it in sleep mode. I only power it down when I am away from home overnight.

 

[66318]

I have mine set to sleep if inactive for an hour. Once I get AirVideo running well on another lower power system, my Pro will go back to a sleep time of 15 minutes. An hour gives me long enough to watch an episode of a TV show streamed to the iPad before bed.

With Wake on Demand, and Back to my Mac, the machine remains accessible when I need it, without being fully on all the time.

It's possible the sleep cycles may be doing harm to the system due to the thermal changes, but it's still running strong after nearly 3 years, and has warranty coverage. Apple ships their systems to default to sleeping when inactive, so I expect such a feature to work and be supported properly, including warranty coverage.

 

[Garamond]

Always on 24/7. Harddrive sleep function disabled, but of course I set the display to go black after 10 mins. This has been a win-win situation, with no harddrive breakdowns or any issues with waking-up-from-sleep after doing this for the past 7 years.

 

[Johnf1285]

Always on 24/7. Harddrive sleep function disabled, but of course I set the display to go black after 10 mins. This has been a win-win situation, with no harddrive breakdowns or any issues with waking-up-from-sleep after doing this for the past 7 years.

This what I have been doing with my past iMac's and with the Mac Pro now.... For a bit on a PC I was using sleep though. Yes I never set hard disks to sleep. Senseless spin ups and spin downs.

It seems avoiding repetative on and off is the best option. Always on would be good, but I guess if I am not using the machine for a day or more at a time, I would probably power down or sleep.