From: "Robert Comer" 

> Servers are run continuously for a number of reasons, so I'm really only
> talking about people's desktops. My hunch is that a cheap disk drive (the
> only kind that you can buy) will rotate a certain number of times, and
> then it will stop. Same for a fan.

That doesn't fit with my experience -- I have disk drives out there that
are over 12 years old still running continuously (and every age in
between.) I've had VERY few hard drive failures.  It's the starting and
stopping that kills them, not continuous spinning.

--
Bob Comer


"John Beckett"  wrote
in message news:lnht421drnr9u6n1vv2pnrgnrsh7v8eg47{at}4ax.com...
> "Geo"  wrote in message
news::
>> It's scary rebooting web servers that almost never get rebooted. Because
>> if
>> anything is going to go wrong, that's usually when it rears it's ugly
>> head.
>>
>> Think about it, when your computers have broken, was it that they
>> wouldn't
>> boot up or did they suddenly die while you were using them?
>
> Absolutely. Hence Microsoft's advice to reboot BEFORE installing an update
> (to find out if your system will survive a reboot so you don't blame the
> update for a problem you had anyway).
>
> However, I think the reboot is just enough stress to cause a flakey system
> to actually die - the fault was there and was going to get you anyway.
>
> Going back 20 years, turning on a disk drive could dim the room lights
> (slight exaggeration)  Now that was stress. Modern systems don't do that.
>
> However, you're perfectly correct that it's the temperature changes that
> can kill components - bad solder connections and other circuit board flaws
> will show up when temperature cycles occur.
>
> Servers are run continuously for a number of reasons, so I'm really only
> talking about people's desktops. My hunch is that a cheap disk drive (the
> only kind that you can buy) will rotate a certain number of times, and
> then it will stop. Same for a fan.
>
> John
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5