Power Options - Win XP

[artbuc]

One of my options to save energy is to turn off my harddrive after a specified time or to never turn it off. Is there any downside to turning off my harddrive? To be honest, I do not know what turning off the harddrive really means.   

I am not concerned about saving electricity. I want the best settings to minimize wear/tear on my hardware. thanks.

[Allan]

I have always set all of my systems to power down the hd and display after 20 minutes of inactivity.

[artbuc]

Thanks Allan. Do you let your PC hibernate after a certain time?

[soybean]

In addition to letting the hard drive power down, why not set your computer to go into Sleep mode after a certain elapsed time?  I would generally use Sleep mode during the day.  I occasionally, indeed, somewhat rarely, use hibernate at the end of a day if I want to preserve the activity I was engaged in and resume from there the next day.

[Allan]

Thanks Allan. Do you let your PC hibernate after a certain time?

I never use sleep or hibernation. Powering down serves the purpose of saving wear and tear on the drive and display and using minimum power. I turn systems off at the end of the day and power them up in the morning.

[soybean]

I never use sleep or hibernation.

If you occasionally have long periods - say, an hour on longer - times of inactivity during the day, why not use sleep mode?

[Allan]

If you occasionally have long periods - say, an hour on longer - times of inactivity during the day, why not use sleep mode?

I'll be happy to answer your question, but prefer not to start a discussion about it in someone else's thread.

1) Neither Hibernation nor Sleep were 100% perfected by Microsoft. By that I mean that neither is universally compatible with all hardware and software configurations (nor, realistically, can they be). Hence the relatively common and varied issues posted on support forums about problems with both features.

2) As I mentioned above, powering down the hd & display serves the purpose of saving wear and tear on both with the added benefit of reducing power consumption. It also serves my purpose 100%.

3) Given the size of today's hd's it's not as important today as it once was for most of us, but hibernation writes a very large file on the system drive.

4) Personal preference.

[soybean]

I'll be happy to answer your question, but prefer not to start a discussion about it in someone else's thread.

Well, we are talking about power options, so I'd say my comments are relevant, albeit going just a bit beyond the scope of the OP's question.  Perhaps artbuc will want to try using sleep mode, having become more aware of it from this discussion.

1) Neither Hibernation nor Sleep were 100% perfected by Microsoft. By that I mean that neither is universally compatible with all hardware and software configurations (nor, realistically, can they be). Hence the relatively common and varied issues posted on support forums about problems with both features.

Understood, but then are you advocating complete non-use of Sleep or hibernation without ever even trying them to see how one's particular system responds to them?  Let's disregard hibernation here and focus on the more commonly used sleep mode.  Since using sleep mode is another step, beyond hard drive and display powering down, in the power saving arena, I'm inclined to think everyone ought to at least test sleep mode to see whether their systems show any quirks related to such use.  And, if there are no quirks, then use of sleep mode seems totally practical. 

[artbuc]

I do not not have a sleep mode. I have stand-by and hibernate. Is stand-by the same as sleep?

[soybean]

Is stand-by the same as sleep?

Yes.

[artbuc]

Let my PC go to sleep last night. Woke up this morning to find it had encountered a serious blue screen error. Not sure if the two are related but I plan to power down HD and monitor but forego sleep mode. Thanks to all for your help.