Will Bootcamp Rebooting Harm my Comp?

[Killery96]

I am planning to upgrade from a 2009 13" MBP to a 2011 High End 15". Big step up hardware wise. I am excited. However, I find that a lot of my console-oriented interests are not exactly supported on the Mac OSX, and so I am thinking to purchase windows 7 and booting it up through a 200gb bootcamp partition to play games. Because I will be gaming relatively often, I imagine I may be changing from bootcamp to OSX and back and forth, up to four or five times a day at max. This certainly may not happen as frequently, and sometimes I may just stay on Mac or stay on Windows, however, my question is:

If I boot into and out of Windows 7 HP from OSX numerous times per day, will this degrade, harm, or quicken the erosion of my Macbook Pro 2011. In Windows sessions I will most likely be gaming and doing light internet browsing, and music. Mac-wise I will do mac-gaming and educationally-oriented activities (writing, imovie, photoshop)

E.

Thanks in advance, I am hoping I can get answers from experienced people out there!

 

[gr8tfly]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "erosion". About the only thing which will age is the battery. Hard drives can wear over time, but I doubt the average amount over time (if any) is different for a specific OS. I have drives that have been running 24/7 for > 8 years.

But, anyway: there's nothing that can harm the machine by booting into different OSs. Bootcamp mostly consists of the Assistant application, which prepares the Windows partition (you will still need to format it during install - be sure to read the Bootcamp documentation available through the Bootcamp Assistant app.), and a set of drivers for the specific set of hardware used in the Mac. (Make sure you select the correct partition during the Windows install.)

Once installed, Windows runs fully native on the Mac, just as it would on other PCs.

One tip that might smooth changing boot volumes is to leave the startup disk set to the OS-X volume and use the "option" key during startup to bring up the boot volume menu. From there, select the Windows volume and boot normally. When you are ready to switch back to OS-X, just restart and you'll automatically boot to OS-X. Because the startup volume hasn't been changed - the default will remain OS-X. (Changing the default is done through the Startup Disk System Preference, or through the Apple tools in Windows.)

 

[Killery96]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "erosion". About the only thing which will age is the battery. Hard drives can wear over time, but I doubt the average amount over time (if any) is different for a specific OS. I have drives that have been running 24/7 for > 8 years.

But, anyway: there's nothing that can harm the machine by booting into different OSs. Bootcamp mostly consists of the Assistant application, which prepares the Windows partition (you will still need to format it during install - be sure to read the Bootcamp documentation available through the Bootcamp Assistant app.), and a set of drivers for the specific set of hardware used in the Mac. (Make sure you select the correct partition during the Windows install.)

Once installed, Windows runs fully native on the Mac, just as it would on other PCs.

One tip that might smooth changing boot volumes is to leave the startup disk set to the OS-X volume and use the "option" key during startup to bring up the boot volume menu. From there, select the Windows volume and boot normally. When you are ready to switch back to OS-X, just restart and you'll automatically boot to OS-X. Because the startup volume hasn't been changed - the default will remain OS-X. (Changing the default is done through the Startup Disk System Preference, or through the Apple tools in Windows.)

Alright thanks alot for your feedback. BTW: When I said erosion I was wondering if either the battery or HDD would be slowly damaged by constant re-booting.

 

[gr8tfly]

Alright thanks alot for your feedback. BTW: When I said erosion I was wondering if either the battery or HDD would be slowly damaged by constant re-booting.

Booting isn't all that different from loading an application. It's just a series of loading specific system files and configuring them.

 

[edddeduck]

Rebooting multiple times a day will have very little effect if anything. We have loads of Mac machines including laptops in our test room they get heavy usage (running for weeks at a time at full speed without a break) and rebooting frequently, this abuse lasts for years and we have not had any of our laptops fail for hardware reasons related to rebooting.

A couple have died over the years but usually the cause has been coffee related

So my advice is don't worry about rebooting shortening the life of your Mac, it will have little if any effect to the reliability of the machine.

Edwin

 

[Killery96]

Rebooting multiple times a day will have very little effect if anything. We have loads of Mac machines including laptops in our test room they get heavy usage (running for weeks at a time at full speed without a break) and rebooting frequently, this abuse lasts for years and we have not had any of our laptops fail for hardware reasons related to rebooting.

A couple have died over the years but usually the cause has been coffee related

So my advice is don't worry about rebooting shortening the life of your Mac, it will have little if any effect to the reliability of the machine.

Edwin

Alright, thanks a lot you all, this has helped!

E.