Best power mode to keep XP Pro in?

S

Smudge

New Member
I have had a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop for 4 years now. In that period of time I have managed to blow two hard drives. I mostly use my laptop for web surfing and word processing. The most recent HD crash was not covered under warranty, so I had to buy the new hard drive. The place that I purchased the hard drive asked if I kept the laptop on all the time or shut it down after each use. I told him that I rarely shut it off, and he said that that forces the hard drive to run lots and puts a lot of extra use on it. So, what are my options? I use the computer randomly throughout the day, and it gets no use at night. Should I keep it on all day and just shut it down at night? Or can I keep it on all the time and adjust my power options so that it is asleep or something thus not using the hard drive? If so, what power options are best recommended? Thanks
 
before yo start thinking that your power habits are the thing thats breaking the drives, think again, Dell has the highest returns rate in any of the top 5 computer manufacturers. Their main falling block is.... you guessed it, hard drives, and powersupplies.

If you take a look in control panel and go to Power Options, on the first screen you will see a box which specifies when to turn the hard disk off. Set this to something like 30mins, then after half an hour of inactivity the hard drive will simply spin down but windows will stay running. When you come back to the machine it wil spin the disk back up and away you go again....

You can of course just put it into standby mode, but ive had a couple of machines that refused to come back out of standby.
 
dragon2309 said:
before yo start thinking that your power habits are the thing thats breaking the drives, think again, Dell has the highest returns rate in any of the top 5 computer manufacturers. Their main falling block is.... you guessed it, hard drives, and powersupplies.

If you take a look in control panel and go to Power Options, on the first screen you will see a box which specifies when to turn the hard disk off. Set this to something like 30mins, then after half an hour of inactivity the hard drive will simply spin down but windows will stay running. When you come back to the machine it wil spin the disk back up and away you go again....

You can of course just put it into standby mode, but ive had a couple of machines that refused to come back out of standby.
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So, would it be ok to keep the computer on all the time provided that I had it set so that the hard disk shuts off after 30 minutes or so?
 
i would make it so that the hard drive shuts off every 30 minutes when your not using it but i recommend that you just turn the labtop off so it doesn't use any power at all. i use my labtop all day then turn it off at night. but mine was a custom built so...and hes right...dells have a lot of returns because their comps are made so good
either try buying a different company labtop or try ibuypower.com you can order a custom labtop. a little expensive but mine is working well
if u dont wanna buy a new labtop just shut it off when your not using it
 
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