Reducing the impact of bad habits on the health of your hardware is a good way to help prolong its life. One such habit is that of switching off your computer at the wall rather than powering it down properly. It seems like a time saver at the end of a busy day and is particularly tempting where one power socket feeds more than one computer.
But by doing this you run the risk of corrupting the data on your hard drive which is not such a great idea.
Our policy for clients is to make the necessary changes internally to the computer using our own software which runs in the background and powers the computer off and on at pre-determined times. If you want to run your exhibit outside your regular hours – say, for a special event – then you simply override the pre-set times by switching the computer on again. It will revert to the regular schedule by itself.
It’s a reliable way to save time and eliminate the risk of corrupting data by switching off at the wall and we recommend it to all our clients.
But, if you’re running hardware that has not been set up in this way, please follow our tip: simply power your computer down properly. It doesn’t take that long really and can save you a lot of hassle in the long term.
