Poll: Leaving on vacation for 2 weeks, NAS will see no use. Shut down or stay up?

[alheim]

That's it in a nutshell. You hear of a lot of folks to like to run their servers 24/7, and in many cases, they need to. Many seem to believe that spinning your hard disks down & up is worse than extended uptimes.

But in my case, the network will be quiet. Power cost isn't an issue, but I'll more than likely shut it down.

Thoughts?

 

[BigDave]

I would never go two weeks without checking my server, so unless I was able to access it remotely, I would
shut it down.

 

[Jailer]

We take a 2 week vacation every year and I leave mine up while I'm gone. Everything else gets turned off though.

 

[Ericloewe]

To be honest, I tend not to shut down my server, but that's due to laziness/forgetfulness caused by impending trips.

A single shutdown/power on cycle is not going to affect your server in any measurable way.

Now, if we were talking about a longer period, the argument could be made that the lack of scrubs would be detrimental. That's not something I'm remotely concerned with for a situation such as yours. For two weeks? Save the power and the wear on the mechanical parts of your server. Just don't forget to turn it back on before sitting down at your computer and trying to access it. :p

 

[pirateghost]

I have too many other people relying on my server outside of my household. Not to mention my sonarr would miss shows.
I leave mine on all the time.

 

[alheim]

I'll take her down for all of the above reasons. Cheers!

 

[Fuganater]

I've been out of country for over 3 months and never shut my system down.

 

[alheim]

Was the system in use by others or for some otter purpose in your absence? Why did you opt to leave it up?

 

[Fuganater]

Was the system in use by others or for some otter purpose in your absence? Why did you opt to leave it up?

At that time no one else was using it. I check it via Team Viewer every week or so. No reason to shut it down as it is built to be on 24/7/365.

 

[joeschmuck]

It comes down to personal preference. If you unplug your TV while gone for fear of electrical issues, then you might as well unplug your NAS because it's the same rationale. I do not unplug my TV so I'd be more apt to keep my NAS running. Also my NAS hardware has been created well enough that if my cooling fans failed, my system still would not overheat. I try to use as much passive cooling as I can. If your system could be damaged by a failing fan and there will be no one there to shut it down, turn it off.

From a hard drive wear perspective, I'd say that is a safe operation, it's not the same as constantly stopping and restarting the drives.