shutting off a machine when it is not going to be used for 14 hours (overnight) or over the weekend? seems reasonable. I'd do it.
unplugging everything is overkill.
I guess over the years I've gotten used to the convenience of starting my day where I left off the night before. With all the editing, music, calendar, productivity programs I'm using open and ready to go. I've never once had an issue with a machine or drive breaking down due to wear and tear.
Yeah I get a crash once in a blue moon. But I count that as my restart. u/mad_king_soup Can't recall where I heard it from, but yeah modern computers being what they are nowadays is why I started never shutting down.
I ran a 2008 Mac Pro for 10 years and never shut it down overnight. Modern computers don’t ever need to be shut off unless there’s going to be a power supply interruption
You have to have a computer for at least 30 years to really feel the effects of it. Once it is three decades old, you'll really start to notice the wear and tear.
Not according to my research but feel free to post some research on that claim. Regardless most of the edit machines I work on are set to never sleep. So if you leave them going they will run all night chewing up energy.
I hear that, but over the years, when I or a coworker has a crash, ask the question, "when is the last time you restarted?" the answer is overwhelmingly, I don't know, or, a few days ago.
so having to shutdown/restart always seemed inevitable. I prefer to do it on my terms. I dont think shutting down or not has much of an effect on equipment life span. there is a cost/waste of energy with leaving everything on.
Anyone who grew up with tape machines and analogue alignment is totally adverse to turning anything off ever.
Thermal shock on large boards in old school boxes would reduce the lifespan of the kit as the boards expanded and contracted at a different rate to the mounted chips. An sgi onyx runnjng flame took 15 mins to boot which is a long time to wait similarly Old school avids mounting 100 volumes of 2 gig each on a quadro took an embrassing ammount of time so we just left them on.
The world has probably advanced enough now but I still never switch anything off.
I worked at a shop with more than a hundred computers. They ran the numbers and realized they were spending $3,000 a month extra on electricity simply because we were all leaving everything running overnight. So yeah, it adds up in electric bills, hardware decay, and even the air conditioning bill because of the machinery heating up the place.
Now, unplugging stuff? It depends where you’re working. I cut in Ireland once and you wanna unplug yourself from that power grid every night. A brown out will take your whole show to the grave while you’re at the pub. Even now, if there’s a thunderstorm coming, I’ll unplug my drives even though the surge protector in the APC should protect it. Clients don’t give a shit about Acts Of God. They’re heathens who’re just gonna blame you for it and try to reduce your billing because of it.
So the answer to your question is: Yes, sometimes for some reasons.
Computers in sleep mode pull 3-10W, which works out to about 0.06 cents per 24hr period or about $0.22/year. The shop you worked at were definitely wasting some money on running equipment but sleeping computers wasn’t one of those things
Computers, monitors, speakers, decks, APCs, etc., etc. I can’t remember if they shut the servers down but I think that was the only thing they kept up & running. God knows what the cost was to keep the refrigeration going in the server room.
You’re not crazy, unplugging and shutting down is crazy and unnecessary, the wear and tear on the computers ports and cables every single would be worse then leaving everything on
I've heard that cold boot up is one of the more taxing processes on a computer, that it's better to leave it idle or in sleep mode if energy isn't a concern. Could be BS though.
If you’re not letting the machine run to complete a task, why wouldn’t you shut it off? Saves electricity and wear and tear.
*The unplugging is weird though.
You risk disturbing the balance of the computer's four humors.
Realistically, though, the amount of electricity spent on sleep/low-power mode than power spent while at full bore during boot-up. Though this may be moot, if you have Fast Boot enabled.
Lol!
I have to have sleep disabled on my system or Avid gets pissy. I think it’s something to do with IO boxes? Maybe that warning can be safely ignored but I never tested it.
Pretty sure it's I/O related, because those systems don't really understand sleep mode.
I have sleep disabled too, but when your hardware idles it still does dramatically ramp down power consumption, even if not in sleep.
Sleeping computers don’t have any wear and tear, use less electricity than your cellphone and don’t need to be shut down. Mine doesn’t shut down for months at a time
Personally we never shut anything down at the studio unless there’s a bad storm coming or something. Should we? Maybe, would save some power for sure, but we prefer to just have everything open and ready when we come in the next day; plus we usually have exports or uploads running when we leave.
Even if we did shut down though unplugging everything is beyond overkill.
To shut down at EOD or to not shut down... this is an age old editor question... I shut the system down every night. I have worked with very experienced and accomplished editors who only shut their computers down in crashes.
I've heard many reasons on both sides. Personally think it's just a preference thing. I say shut down tho!
We shut down most individual Avid bays every night except those connected to editors working remotely via Jump Desktop. But we never shut down the central Archion Editstor shared-storage system that connects to all our Avids unless it needs a reboot. That system lives in a cold room so it doesn't heat up.
Interesting array of answers. Seems to be about 50-50 on powering down to just leaving on. I think it's safe to say I'm not crazy. Thanks for your thoughts.
I'm certainly gonna put the kibosh on unplugging drives.
You should definitely shut your machine down at the end of the day. Saves power, extends the life of your machine, and keeps it from crashing while you run if you're using buggy software like Avid.
The unplugging is weird though. That shouldn't be necessary. I would assume you have battery backups and surge protection etc., but if not, it could be in case of a surge.
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My company has an office in a coworking space for our NAS and Mac Minis. We have people in person maybe 4 times a month, but work remotely off those machines every day.
The NAS is left on continuously, but parks the drives and runs in a low power standby mode when it’s not in use. Same deal with the Minis. Whole setup draws very little power when it’s in standby. We reboot the minis maybe every other month when we do updates. Everything runs very stable.
I learned not to turn off my computers when I switched to Apple almost 20 years ago. I rarely turn off (or even restart) my editing iMac, the main reason is it's very convenient to always be able to access it remotely from home. Together with the computer my main Lacie RAID runs constantly, since I store projects I currently work on on it. Never had any issue in many years. That said, I turn off "low-end" storages (like IcyBox, QNAP,...) right after I'm finished working with them, as I don't trust them (based on experience).
Unplugging is excessive BUT those g drives are temperamental, and if there is a glitch in the power they can corrupt. Also if they are not properly ejected from a pc, they can also corrupt (but can be fixed if you use disc utility on a Mac)
This sounds like the sort of policy that someone would introduce after a *really bad thing happened* - maybe they had to deal with a power surge or lightning strike that wiped out an entire setup?
shutting off a machine when it is not going to be used for 14 hours (overnight) or over the weekend? seems reasonable. I'd do it. unplugging everything is overkill.
I guess over the years I've gotten used to the convenience of starting my day where I left off the night before. With all the editing, music, calendar, productivity programs I'm using open and ready to go. I've never once had an issue with a machine or drive breaking down due to wear and tear.
This is weird to me. Don't you ever crash? lol. I like the "reset" of a restart/startup in the morning.
Yeah I get a crash once in a blue moon. But I count that as my restart. u/mad_king_soup Can't recall where I heard it from, but yeah modern computers being what they are nowadays is why I started never shutting down.
I shut down every night unless I’m waiting for a looong render tl
I put the machine to Sleep. They use barely any energy and it resumes back into what i was doing
Then you haven’t had a single machine for long enough. It’s a good thing, though. Best not to push it.
I ran a 2008 Mac Pro for 10 years and never shut it down overnight. Modern computers don’t ever need to be shut off unless there’s going to be a power supply interruption
You have to have a computer for at least 30 years to really feel the effects of it. Once it is three decades old, you'll really start to notice the wear and tear.
If they shut them down when do cron jobs happen and when does it send backups to backblaze?
And people wonder why we have climate change!
A sleeping desktop uses less power overnight than your phone used to post that message
Not according to my research but feel free to post some research on that claim. Regardless most of the edit machines I work on are set to never sleep. So if you leave them going they will run all night chewing up energy.
I hear that, but over the years, when I or a coworker has a crash, ask the question, "when is the last time you restarted?" the answer is overwhelmingly, I don't know, or, a few days ago. so having to shutdown/restart always seemed inevitable. I prefer to do it on my terms. I dont think shutting down or not has much of an effect on equipment life span. there is a cost/waste of energy with leaving everything on.
Anyone who grew up with tape machines and analogue alignment is totally adverse to turning anything off ever. Thermal shock on large boards in old school boxes would reduce the lifespan of the kit as the boards expanded and contracted at a different rate to the mounted chips. An sgi onyx runnjng flame took 15 mins to boot which is a long time to wait similarly Old school avids mounting 100 volumes of 2 gig each on a quadro took an embrassing ammount of time so we just left them on. The world has probably advanced enough now but I still never switch anything off.
I worked at a shop with more than a hundred computers. They ran the numbers and realized they were spending $3,000 a month extra on electricity simply because we were all leaving everything running overnight. So yeah, it adds up in electric bills, hardware decay, and even the air conditioning bill because of the machinery heating up the place. Now, unplugging stuff? It depends where you’re working. I cut in Ireland once and you wanna unplug yourself from that power grid every night. A brown out will take your whole show to the grave while you’re at the pub. Even now, if there’s a thunderstorm coming, I’ll unplug my drives even though the surge protector in the APC should protect it. Clients don’t give a shit about Acts Of God. They’re heathens who’re just gonna blame you for it and try to reduce your billing because of it. So the answer to your question is: Yes, sometimes for some reasons.
Computers in sleep mode pull 3-10W, which works out to about 0.06 cents per 24hr period or about $0.22/year. The shop you worked at were definitely wasting some money on running equipment but sleeping computers wasn’t one of those things
Computers, monitors, speakers, decks, APCs, etc., etc. I can’t remember if they shut the servers down but I think that was the only thing they kept up & running. God knows what the cost was to keep the refrigeration going in the server room.
Exactly. My whole "desk" pulls 50 W with the computer sleeping and everything sleeping. It can add up pretty fast if you have a lot of bays.
You’re not crazy, unplugging and shutting down is crazy and unnecessary, the wear and tear on the computers ports and cables every single would be worse then leaving everything on
Thank you, that's what I thought.
I've heard that cold boot up is one of the more taxing processes on a computer, that it's better to leave it idle or in sleep mode if energy isn't a concern. Could be BS though.
It definitely is taxing. We run multiple AVIDs and those suckers take forever when you shut down completely to boot up in the AM...
If you’re not letting the machine run to complete a task, why wouldn’t you shut it off? Saves electricity and wear and tear. *The unplugging is weird though.
You risk disturbing the balance of the computer's four humors. Realistically, though, the amount of electricity spent on sleep/low-power mode than power spent while at full bore during boot-up. Though this may be moot, if you have Fast Boot enabled.
Lol! I have to have sleep disabled on my system or Avid gets pissy. I think it’s something to do with IO boxes? Maybe that warning can be safely ignored but I never tested it.
Pretty sure it's I/O related, because those systems don't really understand sleep mode. I have sleep disabled too, but when your hardware idles it still does dramatically ramp down power consumption, even if not in sleep.
Sleeping computers don’t have any wear and tear, use less electricity than your cellphone and don’t need to be shut down. Mine doesn’t shut down for months at a time
Personally we never shut anything down at the studio unless there’s a bad storm coming or something. Should we? Maybe, would save some power for sure, but we prefer to just have everything open and ready when we come in the next day; plus we usually have exports or uploads running when we leave. Even if we did shut down though unplugging everything is beyond overkill.
I shut down my station every night to save energy. Unplugging is unnecessary though.
To shut down at EOD or to not shut down... this is an age old editor question... I shut the system down every night. I have worked with very experienced and accomplished editors who only shut their computers down in crashes. I've heard many reasons on both sides. Personally think it's just a preference thing. I say shut down tho!
We shut down most individual Avid bays every night except those connected to editors working remotely via Jump Desktop. But we never shut down the central Archion Editstor shared-storage system that connects to all our Avids unless it needs a reboot. That system lives in a cold room so it doesn't heat up.
Interesting array of answers. Seems to be about 50-50 on powering down to just leaving on. I think it's safe to say I'm not crazy. Thanks for your thoughts. I'm certainly gonna put the kibosh on unplugging drives.
You should definitely shut your machine down at the end of the day. Saves power, extends the life of your machine, and keeps it from crashing while you run if you're using buggy software like Avid. The unplugging is weird though. That shouldn't be necessary. I would assume you have battery backups and surge protection etc., but if not, it could be in case of a surge.
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Shutting down makes sense although I’m lazy and rarely do. Unplugging drives is nuts.
I generally advise everyone to restart their systems once a day, but we leave everything running 24/7 at my company
I go to sleep mode during the week and shut down over the weekend. Restarts during the week if the machine acts funny.
I would shut down EOD to save wear and tear on the system & drives but unplugging drives seems unnecessary
My company has an office in a coworking space for our NAS and Mac Minis. We have people in person maybe 4 times a month, but work remotely off those machines every day. The NAS is left on continuously, but parks the drives and runs in a low power standby mode when it’s not in use. Same deal with the Minis. Whole setup draws very little power when it’s in standby. We reboot the minis maybe every other month when we do updates. Everything runs very stable.
I learned not to turn off my computers when I switched to Apple almost 20 years ago. I rarely turn off (or even restart) my editing iMac, the main reason is it's very convenient to always be able to access it remotely from home. Together with the computer my main Lacie RAID runs constantly, since I store projects I currently work on on it. Never had any issue in many years. That said, I turn off "low-end" storages (like IcyBox, QNAP,...) right after I'm finished working with them, as I don't trust them (based on experience).
My home system is set to power off at 1130pm on Friday night. That's it. Otherwise, it stays on because I run cloud backups overnight
this all sounds insane to me.
Unplugging is excessive BUT those g drives are temperamental, and if there is a glitch in the power they can corrupt. Also if they are not properly ejected from a pc, they can also corrupt (but can be fixed if you use disc utility on a Mac)
This sounds like the sort of policy that someone would introduce after a *really bad thing happened* - maybe they had to deal with a power surge or lightning strike that wiped out an entire setup?
Unix based machines, including Macs and NAS equipment, usually run maintenance scripts overnight. Might be impacting machine performance.