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Agent69 · Mar 13, 2003, 06:38 PM

I met a dude at work today and he told me that he runs his iBook continuously (never sleeping) as a FTP server. He says it has been doing this for about 10 days now and he likes it because it is like having a server with a built in UPS.

So out of curiousity, is it safe to run an iBook, or any laptop, like this? Wouldn't the battery start having problems from never being used?

andreas_g4 · 07:09 PM

2,5" Harddrives are not made for running 24/7. I suggest he should backup regulary, since the harddrive will not be too reliable in the long run.

Edit: Changed "suppose" with "suggest". English - F

Panzer · Mar 13, 2003, 07:27 PM

Right on. I checked my 30gb drive and according to IBM (now Hitachi) it should only be powered on for 333 hours per month, which amounts to around 11 hrs/day. Question is, does spinning down the drive still count as powered on?
I suppose as a work around, you could always keep everything on an external disk (firewire/usb). Also I wouldn't worry about the battery.
My ibook is on quite a lot, 24/7 for the last several days actually, and I have not had any problems with it.

iamnid · Mar 13, 2003, 10:25 PM

You could always remove the battery while the ibook is plugged in if you are worried about it. Your friend could also get an external firewire drive if he's worried about excessive wear on his internal drive.

Agent69 · Mar 13, 2003, 10:52 PM

Thanks.

iohead · Mar 14, 2003, 03:39 AM

Originally posted by andreas_g4:
2,5" Harddrives are not made for running 24/7. I suggest he should backup regulary, since the harddrive will not be too reliable in the long run.

Edit: Changed "suppose" with "suggest". English - F

I can vouch for this from personal experience - I had as many as three notebook disk drives die within a year - one thing common in all three was that they were "up" almost all day (and mostly all night).

-A

Agent69 · Mar 14, 2003, 01:41 PM

Originally posted by iohead:
I can vouch for this from personal experience - I had as many as three notebook disk drives die within a year - one thing common in all three was that they were "up" almost all day (and mostly all night).

-A

I have to admit to having never heard of this before. Neither did my friend, who is going to get another machine to host his ftp site.

sniffer · Mar 14, 2003, 02:18 PM

Hmm.. I think the above posts about the limitations in running 2.5" hd 24/7 sounds resonable. I had a sleep issue so I let my poor fellow run 24/7 for some time, and I noticed that I got the well known noise issue afterwards.

ibook_steve · Mar 14, 2003, 02:45 PM

Well, I've been using an old iBook as an Airport software base station and USB print server since Jaguar came out, and I've had no problems at all. I have the screen set to turn off after a minute and the hard drive to spin down. Not a problem. Granted it's not used as a server so the drive doesn't have to spin all the time, but I'm not too concerned about that drive. I have access to a large number of 2.5" drives, so it wouldn't be a problem if it died.

Steve

Phoible · Mar 14, 2003, 06:02 PM

I remember when the stuff that Microsoft Office puts in your startup folder killed my hard drive. It ran continuously for a few months, and then started to get errors. I was pretty pissed when I figured out that you could delete that stuff, and the drive would stop. But that was a 486 running Windows 98, not an iBook.

sniffer · Mar 17, 2003, 11:17 AM

Originally posted by Phoible:
I remember when the stuff that Microsoft Office puts in your startup folder killed my hard drive. It ran continuously for a few months, and then started to get errors. I was pretty pissed when I figured out that you could delete that stuff, and the drive would stop. But that was a 486 running Windows 98, not an iBook.

I'll would think all the disc swapping running 98 on a 486 would be enought to kill the drive alone.

clf8 · Mar 17, 2003, 02:07 PM

I've been running my iBook 466 SE continuously for the last 3 years, and either on or asleep before that. Remember, unless you're running some type of server, for the most part the disk goes to sleep after a period of inactivity. You've got to have the box checked in the Energy Saver options, and it adds a half second when you start to use it. But, aside from the fact that 20gig is too small (full of mp3s) and 800x600 is nearly impossible to work with, the machine has been a workhorse with no problems. Whenever I get around to replacing it with a new iBook or pBook, the old guy is going to become a dedicated stereo component.

So, no, there are no issues with running 24/7. Also, the thing's always plugged in with the battery. Of course, over this time the battery has dropped to around an hour of life. But I'm sure some of that is OS X, and some of that is just an old battery.