From: "Geo" 

"John Beckett"  wrote
in message news:lnht421drnr9u6n1vv2pnrgnrsh7v8eg47{at}4ax.com...

> 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).

Why is it they suggest a reboot before applying a patch? The smart thing to
do is run a backup before applying a patch. 

> 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.

I only kind of agree with the cheap drive comment. For example if you set
your drives to shut down after 5 minutes then they go thru a lot of
shutdown/startup cycles and will fail way sooner than if you set it for an
hour or always running.

Fans, well yeah fans are crap and the longer the run time the less time you
have left. But I've also seen fans make noise when cold and quiet down once
they warm up.

Speaking of fans, on one server I took some fans I had from a mini system
years ago, these are all cast aluminum 120v 4" diameter fans, well I
stuck 2 of them in the case and spliced them directly into the power cord
before the power supply. Those fans have been on and running for 8 years
now and have outlived at least 3 disk drives in that server.

Geo. (course they probably cost more than the disk drives)

Geo.

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