To shut down or not

Question

my macpro with 4 hard drives and connected to a 23" cinema display.
i use my computer twice a day, once in the morning for about 2 hours then when I get home from work for another 2 hours. should i leave my computer on? put it to sleep?
just looking for the best option... less wear and tear on my hardware.

Answer 1

4151
Hello again Jeff,
So this shutting down vs. sleep question is clearly not very problematic after all.
- (shutdown) Cold boots are certainly the most demanding task for the whole computer in general
vs.
- (sleep) Idling and gently resting, but for such a long time per 24 hour
won't make any significant difference in the long run.
Now, about this so-called nightly maintenance:
This issue sounds off-topic, but it is not, as the question arises each time along with the shutdown vs. sleep vs. awake question.
Mike B,
You are very late with your KB articles information. It's been over one year now that the new periodic behaviour is known and indeed put back to its benign character, not important issue at all.
You are (were) also wrong about how the periodic tasks used to work, if you think (thought) only one or two times a week was equivalent to catching every night.
You wrote:
"All this does is scare those who are not very computer literate into thinking Macs are too complex when they are the opposite in many ways."
- Indeed Mike, Macs just work, and you don't have to mention the nightly periodic tasks anymore in a "sleep vs. shutdown" thread.
This issue was worth mentioning many years ago when it was a pure Unix issue, far before Mac OS X was completed and enhanced with new versions,
and also
far before this new era of huge hard drives capacities that make the periodic tasks such a non-issue even more.
"a couple of times a week just to make sure the maintenance is caught"
- it wouldn't work that way (I mean in Panther and before, when this question was already overkill but still worth the look):
There are three different maintenance tasks, occuring at three different times and doing three different things.
The "daily" is set to run at 3:15 every morning.
The "weekly" is set to run at 4:30 in the morning on Saturdays. (3:15 since Tiger)
The "monthly" is set to run at 5:30 in the morning on the first day of each month.
If you want all three to run, it's not by leaving your Mac on once or twice a week at random times...
"you should read this [KB article #107388]"
- this article is still useful with Jaguar and with old G3 or small-capacity Macs that run Jaguar or Panther.
It's never been updated, even the latest update date is a lie. See the software it mentions (CronMaster, weRclean): long gone, unavailable even by searching Version Tracker oldies.
"(About OSX 10.4.2 Update) [KB article #301722]"
(here is the text you are referring to:
"This update ensures that periodic background maintenance tasks run as scheduled in launchd.conf.")
- "as scheduled in launchd.conf", yes, since before Tiger (10.4) the periodic tasks were taken care of by cron, not launchd.
What this 10.4.2 update brings, is the fix to one of the two bugs launchd new handling was suffering since 10.4.0.
In 10.4.0 and in 10.4.1 already, launchd does the maintenance, not cron anymore, except that because of a bug there is no chance for the tasks to be automated at all, unless you reboot your Mac every day.
So this is the 10.4.2 fix: not having to reboot every day anymore.
The new launchd handling is meant to precisely not need anymore our Macs to stay awake at night like before:
Maintenance tasks are meant to now run delayed if sleeping at night.
No need to worry anymore, except,
-- there is still one other bug: Tasks will run, sleep or not sleep, right, BUT will be cancelled sometimes if Mac is shutdown AND sleeps a lot during the week.
These details just so you know.
Please run the ls -al /var/log/*.out Terminal command day after day if you are interested and would like to verify my info. Keep track of your sleep times, and do the maths.
Much better, much Mac-friendly, simple and easy way:
- Just don't worry about these periodic maintenance tasks, and run them manually once or twice a month.
Installing Anacron or Macaroni too is overkill. Just use your OnyX or Cocktail or TinkerTool System or your favorite small utility.
Jeff,
in a word, about the nightly automatic maintenance:
It is not at all such an important thing that would have to be mentioned here.
The kind of maintenance it does, anyway, is about taking care of log files and some system database. It has not much to do with Mac OS X performance itself
(all that is taken care of automatically, and all Mac OS X needs is a lot of free HD space and RAM)
--> Sleep settings in Energy Saver,
--> Shut down if Mac left untouched for more than 24 hours.
Enjoy your Mac!
Axl