Please advise us whether to turn the computer off or leave it on standby. I am told that repeated starts are bad for the hard drive.
David Sharratt
It is up to you. To keep systems running for as long as possible, we used to leave them on all the time. This avoided stress (from the electronics heating and cooling) and reduced hard drive crashes. However, modern equipment no longer suffers from the same amount of thermal stress and hard drive heads are designed to "park" safely. So while it might still be true that leaving a PC on will make it last longer, most people replace their PCs long before parts fail.
You save most energy by turning everything off. However, you have to reboot the PC each time. Turning the monitor off and hibernating the PC is a good compromise. It uses almost no energy -- typically 2.5W or less -- and your PC should restart in less than 30 seconds. You can save far more energy on household heating and lighting than you can by foregoing hibernation.
