Does leaving hardware on all the time make it slower?

[talksr]

I have recently been helping a school who used to keep their hardware on all day every day "for spyware, antivirus scans and updates". Seems a little over kill to me.

 

The majority of their desktops or laptops were i3 or i5 processor based with average ram.

Some of the systems have seen very little use and look brand new yet run terribly slow.

 

Naturally, rather than mess around tidying up the OS, I opted for a clean install but find they are still as slow as anything.

There is no dust build up inside and at another site (who don't leave their stuff on 24-7), I found that the identical models they have, run far more smoothly.

 

The computers in question have good old fashioned hard disks, no SSD technology here.

It is my thought that the hard drives are possibly quite worn out and as a result, this is making the systems so slow and tired.

Does anyone know if that could be the case? I just find it curious that at another site, identical models (which are not left on all the time) work so well.

[psydii]

Possibly. You will only get anecdote though.

 

Windows 7 does seem slower to us than it did a few years ago. Putting Windows 10 onto our 3/4/5 year old machines has been an eye opener.

 

We do leave our machine on most of the time, otherwise there is a real risk that they will start maintenance (defrag etc/update checks etc) as People try to log on in the morning.

 

As you appear to be in the lucky position of having a control sample, take some WPA traces and compare.

 

Be aware that a freshly imaged machine that installs updates etc need six reboots/logins and a few hours a week of being on but unused before it properly optimises itself. (Not true if It has an ssd)

[Griff]

I would concur with your statement I cannot imagine its going to be good for the hardware and the HDD, not to mention the energy that could be saved by shutting them down at night. Is the computer lab cooled? someone once told me machines run 20% better in an air conditioned environment lol although he was the guy selling the AC.

 

I would probably look at upgrading them to SSD..maybe just upgrade one at first in case they have fried the machines by leaving them on all the time.

[Dos_Box]

Does Task Manager show any excessive memory or disk useage by a particular app or process?

[elsiegee40]

Windows would get slower over the years as updates and changes make it more of a lumbering beast than when it was first installed. Nothing new there.

 

When wake on LAN is available, why leave client machines up and running 24/7? I'd rather save the planet and the electricity bill.

[witch]

Windows would get slower over the years as updates and changes make it more of a lumbering beast than when it was first installed. Nothing new there.

.

But why would it stay slow after being re-imaged?

[elsiegee40]

But why would it stay slow after being re-imaged?

 

The OS. is constantly getting bigger and more complex with every update. Every program installed on it is doing likewise.

 

It will become significant over the lifetime of the computer

[Dos_Box]

With spinning disks a fresh image (unless configured not to do so) would run the indexing process which can take time as well as background defrag.

It could also be affected by generic Windows HD controller drivers. I've seen these slow down systems considerably in the past. The OP would have to check device manager to see what is installed.

[Wolfmatty]

What Antivirus do you use? We used Sophos until recently because when it did any updates or virus scans it would render the computers useless as it would use up 99% processor and most of the ram so we swapped it out for system center endpoint protection and the computers run like a dream now. Hope this helps!

[Dos_Box]

Some good suggestions and advice here, keep 'em coming folks

[ICT_Pro]

Old spinning hard disk get slow after 2/3 years but if they used 24/7 than I believe hard disk need to replace, If you can't afford SSD just try few computers with new Hard Disk for testing I am confident that will make a big difference.

[MatthewL]

Personally yes I think it does have some effect. My home PC is an i5 that is on 24/7 due to an application I use to monitor something and once a week it gets a reboot but its nothing like it was when I first set it up. I occasionally buy new hard drive and do a rebuild and that does seem to help.

[jinnantonnixx]

Possibly. You will only get anecdote though.

 

Windows 7 does seem slower to us than it did a few years ago. Putting Windows 10 onto our 3/4/5 year old machines has been an eye opener.

 

We do leave our machine on most of the time, otherwise there is a real risk that they will start maintenance (defrag etc/update checks etc) as People try to log on in the morning.

 

As you appear to be in the lucky position of having a control sample, take some WPA traces and compare.

 

Be aware that a freshly imaged machine that installs updates etc need six reboots/logins and a few hours a week of being on but unused before it properly optimises itself. (Not true if It has an ssd)

 

 

A fair test would be to compare a Windows 10 install with a *fresh* install of 7.

 

Widows rot is still here.

 

This doesn't address the OP's question though - he's re-installed with a fresh OS but the machines are still slow.

It's possible that the disks are past their best; re-reads and jitters can slow things down even through the disk still works.

Might be worth comparing the SMART stats for the disks.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-smart-stats-indicate-hard-drive-failures/

Edited November 16, 2016 by jinnantonnixx

[pcstru]

Old spinning hard disk get slow after 2/3 years

This is quite a claim. Do you have/can you point to any evidence for this please?

 

A modern HD consists of magnetic platters, a RW head and a quite sophisticated controller. An HD does change during it's lifetime - sectors might become unreliable and be marked as unavailable. That information is stored on the controller so from the other side of the interface, no one should notice. Other than that, the platters spin at the same speed, the heads move at the same rate and the cache will be the same size so there is really nothing to slow it down over time and it should be no different to new.

[ICT_Pro]

Not a claim, just telling the experience .....

Didn't said modern HD, used to have issue with old drives might technology have improved now but no harm to test it to find the problem.

[difinity]

There is a little slow down with Windows over time, but terribly slow suggests something more is a miss. Are the drivers up to date ? Perhaps the original image has issues ? How does the network do updates ? There is a bug that I see often with Windows just hanging at updates until a patch is applied. Perhaps there is an old group policy or share the network is trying to access ? If the hard drives were "ageing" then this is down to oxidisation on the contacts on the PCB. Unscrew the PCB and if the contacts are dirty clean them with a pencil eraser. I doubt it is this as you don't report any crashing just slowness.

[Oaktech]

This is entirely anecdotal, but here goes...

 

I'm finding that HDDs don't seem to fail as often and spectacularly as they used to. However with low energy drives (WD green) and 5400 spin drives, particularly from Toshiba, WD and Seagate they seem to be much more tolerant of issues. For me this feels like their performance seems to degrade abruptly after about 2 years and then sit at a level for ages whilst getting thrashier and more error prone but not really getting any worse in terms of noticeable performance.

 

Interestingly I've got 5400 spin laptop HDD from Hitachi and Samsung that are now 5 and 7 years old respectively in external caddies and both of them benchmark better than a brand new WD blue.

 

I wonder if it is significant that 2 years feels like when the performance degrades and 2 years is when most of the warranties expire?

[difinity]

The WD Greens are garbage. They have known bugs. How to Fix Western Digital Caviar Green Bug | Those Reviews That You Need.

The other issues are likely to be corrosion as seen in the photo above.

[psydii]

How to collect and analyze disk performance data:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/robertsmith/2012/02/07/analyzing-storage-performance-using-the-windows-performance-analysis-toolkit-wpt/

[enjay]

It is certainly plausible. I suggest putting fresh builds on a few, and putting SSDs and fresh builds in a few more then comparing the two.

 

As others have touched on, though, there are all sorts of other variables which could affect the PC's performance - server age, infrastructure type and speed, VLANs, noisy devices on the network, plus many more. Are you able to swap PCs between your two schools and see what they do in their new locations?