What is the longest period of time you have kept your Mac turned on....?

[Caitlyn]

It's not at all harmful. But the longest I've kept mine on has been only 4 days.

 

[ingenious]

Isn't it also that OS X performs it's own version of a defrag when the computer is inactive?

I was reading somewhere that because of the unix foundation, it works silently, and therefore, you should keep it on for at least some time when you're not using it. It helps keep the computer clean, like a defrag on a windows machine would.

Yes, but doesn't it have to actually be on? I don't think it does anything like that if it's asleep.

 

[ingenious]

It has daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that are run automatically to delete old log files, etc. It's not really anything like a defragmentation but there is a version of that which runs automatically on the opening of any file of 20 MB or fewer. The daily process runs about 03:15 every night with the weekly and monthly running afterwards on the appropriate days.

So these will run even if the computer's asleep? I always heard they wouldn't (hence my previous post).

 

[wxboss]

Yes, but doesn't it have to actually be on? I don't think it does anything like that if it's asleep.

With OS X 10.4, it will perform the daily maintenance scripts at 3:15 AM weekdays, Weekly scripts on Saturdays at 3:15 AM and Monthly scripts on the first day of the month at 5:30 AM.

These aren't really defrag utilities but more clean up utilities. Defraging is generally done by the OS when opening and closing files and during installs.

If you have done quite a few installs, it would be best to go to the Disk Utility and run the Verify and Repair Permissions.

Now, the maintenance scripts will run once the computer has been awaken from sleep if it slept through the times listed above, yet if the computer was off during those time, they will not run. You can download OnyX for the Mac which lets you customize and schedule these processes along with many other usefull tools.

 

[Makosuke]

People who leave their computer on (as opposed to asleep) all the time baffle me--there's really very little good reason to do it, and it wastes a lot of electricity, which equals money even if you have no environmental concern at all. The thermal expansion and contraction isn't a significant issue for anything but the moving parts, which are limited to fans and the hard drive, and of course modern hard drives are designed to handle thousands of up-down cycles--heck, the OS puts it to sleep when you're not doing anything, and if memory serves for a long time it would even do it if you unchecked the "sleep drives" box.

My G5 tower, for example, were I to leave it on (as opposed to asleep, which only uses slightly more power than off) when I'm not using it, would rack me up at least $10 in extra electric bills every single month--that's non-trivial, in my book. Were I to be running folding at least it wouldn't be a total waste, but the additional load would about double that to $20 a month.

That said, if you include sleep time, I've had my work machine up for 6 months straight with 10.3, and I only restarted then because it was getting silly skipping OS updates just to see how long I could keep it up. The server at work (XServe G5, 10.3.9) of course never sleeps, and it routinely goes over a month without needing a restart for updates. It's only twice needed a restart because of issues, and one of those cases was caused by a massive DHCP screwup on my campus network.

The MBP I'm on right now has been up for 10 hours, most of that asleep of course. My home G5 tower on 10.4.6 usually runs about two weeks (with a LOT of sleep/wake cycles) between restarts, but in that particular case the restarts are usually forced by some sort of misbehavior--most frequently failure to wake from sleep.

 

[Nermal]

I only turn off my iMac when I'm taking it to game at a friend's place

However, I do put it to sleep at night.

 

[emaja]

I have mine on 24/7, except when I leave town for an overnight.

Longest time between reboots is 47 days. I only reboot when there is an update that requires it. No need to reboot otherwise.

The maintenance scripts will not run if your Mac is sleeping or off (obviously), but if you have 10.4.3 or later installed they will run when you wake or turn on your computer.

With 10.4.2 and earlier, if you slept or turned off your Mac overnight, they would never run at all which was not really that big of a deal since you could force them to run anytime you wanted to.

 

[RacerX]

24/7 for years at a time.

Displays are turned off and drives spun down on systems not in use, but pretty much the systems themselves are up all the time (all my systems act like one system, so I need to access info on any of them). And there is no sense in turning them off as I don't sleep normal hours (I have no sleep schedule, so neither do my computers).

 

[Nate4747]

I only reboot on a power failure, upgrade or OS update. My mini stays on always and sleeps when I'm not using it. I turn off the LCD and speakers too, but the computer never gets to rest.

 

[Mord]

5 years.

my lc475 under my bed running as a mail server.

 

[Shadow]

Its ironic-the longer you leave a Mac on the faster it gets, but the longer you leave a PC the slower it gets!

Seriously, I rarley leave my PC on for more than 2 days-the longest is 3 I think-I'm to scared for it to be (even) slower.

 

[yippy]

I restart my PowerBook about once per week. The only time I have shut it off in the 2+ years I have owned it was to install ram and when the hard drive died. It has probably been shut down for a total of 4-5 days over that 2 year period.

I sleep it every other night and to transport it. That is the closest to shutting down I get.

 

[Caitlyn]

5 years.

my lc475 under my bed running as a mail server.

I remember hearing 40 days as a record on another forum. I guess you beat them hands down. Haha, nice.

 

[yellow]

I had a user complain that his Mac was acting "weird", I connected remotely and confirmed that it was indeed acting "weird". I asked him when the last time was that he rebooted and he said "oh a couple of weeks ago, I think". I checked the uptime (which I saved in an email for posterity's sake).

yellow% uptime 
12:19PM  up [COLOR="Red"][B]129 days, 20 mins[/B][/COLOR], 3 users, load averages: 0.57, 0.45, 0.39

A couple of weeks, indeed! This was with Panther. Needless to say, I had him reboot and everything was back to "normal".

24/7 for years at a time.

Solaris boxes don't count.

 

[Josias]

My MacBook: 8 hours 37 minutes. (I have had it for 6 days)
My old windows: 2-3 days (I had it for a year).

I usually turn my MB off before I go to bed, and I turn it on when i get up (when I come home on schooldays). It's not because I'm only up 8 hours, bu it's because I had to get a lot new updates for it since it's spitshine new.

 

[RacerX]

Solaris boxes don't count.

Actually I haven't had any of my Suns running in almost a year (I hope to replace my SPARCclassics with a SPARCstation 5 this summer).

Most of my systems are at 36 days uptime because I was out of town for a week about a month ago. My PowerMac 7500 is at 242 days (I left that one on while I was away).

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I like to keep my PPC mini on 24/7 for months at a time, but it usually gets a reboot about once a month, either due to electrical storms, power outages, or software updates. 99.9999% of the time, it doesn't even need the reboot, but once in the past year and a half that I've had it, I noticed that it actually needed a reboot because the video playback was stuttering. strange...

Oh, and I turn if off if I'm going out of town.

 

[Makosuke]

yellow% uptime 
12:19PM  up [COLOR="Red"][B]129 days, 20 mins[/B][/COLOR], 3 users, load averages: 0.57, 0.45, 0.39

A couple of weeks, indeed! This was with Panther. Needless to say, I had him reboot and everything was back to "normal".

Hah! I saw the exact same thing happen to a friend with a 12" PowerBook that was running 10.2 and didn't have enough RAM--she brought it to me saying it was running slow, and indeed it was, with the hard drive grinding severely. I asked when she had restarted it last, and she at first thought I meant putting it to sleep. When I explained, she said "I have no idea."

And indeed, it was well over a month when I checked. On 10.2 with 256MB of RAM, that's going to slow you down just a smidge, I'd say. Restart of course cleared it up, and I suggested that she shut it down at least once every week or two. She's since bumped the RAM, and as far as I know that dealt with it, of course.

Oh, and I forgot--people at work who don't like to shut down at night routinely leave their Macs running (not awake at night, thankfully) for at least a month at a time.

 

[Mord]

I remember hearing 40 days as a record on another forum. I guess you beat them hands down. Haha, nice.

it was a bit noisy so i took the fans out of it, my room is generally very cold, like 10-15c so it's never had a problem.

 

[bousozoku]

So these will run even if the computer's asleep? I always heard they wouldn't (hence my previous post).

No, they won't run when the computer is asleep.

 

[iHeartTheApple]

LOL I shut down my MacBook and PowerBook *every* day ...I never leave them on overnight and only sleep them when needed. Of course, I've always been that way with all my computers, Mac or PC. Oh well, I guess it's just a personal preference. For those who do it my way, download an app called MacJanitor. It will run the daily/weekly/monthly housekeeping procedures that your Mac would if it was awake all the time.

 

[yellow]

For those who do it my way, download an app called MacJanitor. It will run the daily/weekly/monthly housekeeping procedures that your Mac would if it was awake all the time.

If you're running Tiger, this is completely unnessesary, as launchd now runs the show and will check (and run) said scripts whenever the Mac is woken from sleep or rebooted and the script is nesessary.

 

[Max on Macs]

I've only shut my MacBook Pro down once since I got it in early March. But it has had reboots whenever there have been software updates that require one, and it leeps while being carried.

My PowerBook would have an uptime of 90+ days at times before I did a software update or shut it down. It never seemed to mind my lack of love.

 

[dr_lha]

Hello...talking with a friend about how long you can / should keep you Mac turned on....and wondering who holds the record?
I am talking about being "not shut down"...
what amount of time may be harmful....?
How long can your Mac stay runnung....?
R

We have a machine at work which previous to the recent security update had an uptime of 217 days. Its running Panther BTW and is isolated from the internet so the security patch wasn't really necessary. Its an always-on machine and worked flawlessly.