General Query

[uptown]

Hi,

I wanted to get an opinion on how long is it safe to keep a desktop running at a stretch considering the only activity being done is downloading torrent data. Not the software aspect of it but in terms of longevity of hardware. My setup is well ventilated.


Thnks.

[DonRayner]

Actaully, the most failure prone time for electronics is during powerdown or powerup. Just make sure that you have proper surge protection or a UPS attached to it and you will have no problems

[Nepomuk]

It also depends on the OS - I know that some people have their Linux computers running for months or longer without a restart, while I can't imagine that for most Windows machines. Don't know what Macs or other Unixes are like in those terms, probably somewhat similar to Linux.

Greetings,
Nepomuk

[uptown]

It also depends on the OS - I know that some people have their Linux computers running for months or longer without a restart, while I can't imagine that for most Windows machines. Don't know what Macs or other Unixes are like in those terms, probably somewhat similar to Linux.

Greetings,
Nepomuk

Sorry for the late follow up, but could you elaborate on that.

[Nepomuk]

Sure!

As I'm sure you've experienced if you've ever used Windows for any length of time, it crashes ever so often. How often this happens is influenced by many factors, the probably best known one being how long it's been since the last reinstall. If you're just running one program on it and nothing else, not giving it much user input and so on, it should normally be pretty stable (although it's no guaranty of course). There are even versions of Windows that are created to run like that: Windows Server 2003 and it's successor 2008, to mention the newest two versions.
Now, experience tell me, that at least privately hardly anyone keeps their Windows PCs running for much more than a few days. With servers that's different of course, but here Linux is much more common. Why?

Well, Linux is pretty stable. I know from personal experience, that Linux can run for many days WITH user interaction without any problem. I know from other sources, that it can even run for months or longer without any problem. That's one of the reasons, Linux is the most successful system in the area of servers. Another reason is security - you don't need any firewalls (if you want to do specific settings, check out iptables) or anti virus programs (I've never heard of a Linux virus) and crackers have a much harder time cracking into your system. Oh, and you don't have to defragment your hard drives (which is a great thing, because a lot of downloading can fragment hard drives pretty bad).

Downloading torrent data isn't a problem either - there are many programs to download torrents under Linux (one pretty good one is Azureus, but there are loads of other choices) and you can even get many Linux distributions as torrents.

If you want to learn more about Linux, you could read my Linux beginners article, that I've just posted.

Greetings,
Nepomuk

[uptown]

Thanks Nepomuk. That was enlightening.

[Nepomuk]

You're welcome! I'm always happy to help. :-)

Greetings,
Nepomuk

[Curtis Rutland]

I usually keep my work computer up for about two weeks, before things start getting slow, or screwing up. A restart fixes that. The problem is that programs don't necessarily clean up properly after themselves, including some of the windows internal programs. A restart gets it back to a fresh, clean state.

I have had my Mac Mini running at home for weeks and weeks on end, just turning off my monitor, and restarting when I get software updates that require it. My home PC I don't reboot all that often, but because it's loud, I use the sleep feature. That shouldn't affect it's uptime statistic, because it doesn't restart, it just keeps enough power to the ram so it doesn't clear...so my Vista machine can stay up for quite some time without being too unstable.

BTW, if you ever want to know how long your windows machine has been up, run this command from the terminal:

net statistics workstation

And the first line will tell you the last boot date.

[uptown]

What about...

Would you say a program like FreeRam XP will take care of what you are talking about.

[Nepomuk]

If it actually does what it promises (and not all of these programs do!), then it will help. Take care of everything? Most certainly not. But of course, I have no idea what sort of time you were thinking about. Maybe just standard XP will do fine.

Greetings,
Nepomuk

[Curtis Rutland]

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about this if all I were doing was running torrents. Instability won't be that big of an issue if you're just running one program constantly, unless the program itself has issues.

I wouldn't buy extra software for this kind of thing. And since you're going to be checking up on it every now and then, (to add new torrents or retrieve the finished ones or whatever) you can just restart it if it seems to be running really slowly.

[Nepomuk]

Mind you, I would set the computer do defragment regularly, as downloading a lot can really fragment the hard drive.

Greetings,
Nepomuk