Computer Wear & Tear

I've run BOINC 24/7 since beta, and have seen zero hardware issues as a result.

The only wear and tear problem were the two cooling fans I had to replace. But they were of a cheap type and make, I did not expect much anyway.

I'm curious about whether anyone else may have experienced what I did: complete hard drive failure after two-months of 24/7 work for this project. Symptoms were dramatic slowing, followed by a complete crash.

I've replaced the computer (IBM ThinkPad) with an HP Pavilion laptop, which might work much faster, but I'm reluctant to load the program again.

Please tell me the program is harmless, since I'd like to do my bit for science. BTW: I'm rebuilding the failed computer because it's better-equipped than the HP to run my Meade LX90 telescope.

Tom

If your harddisk was marginal, I am sure that running any distributed computing project will accelerate the inevitable. Common sense indicates that writing to the disk every few minutes will hasten the end of a weak component. E@H makes frequent disk writes so that not to much work is lost if you power down, or if the machine crashes for any reason.

It may well be that the HD would have lasted another few months, six maybe, without running E@H, but I'd guess you lost no more than that.

If it was not already faulty a hard disk should be able to stand continuous use, and when the machine is not being used for anything else the frequent writes will all be to the same part of the disk, so it should not have to be moving its heads very much.

With a new machine it can be argued that it is an advantage to run a DC project: if you are unlucky enough to have any marginal components you want them to fail sooner rather than later so you get the benefit of the warranty. If your HP is under warranty I'd certainly advise running E@H for this reason.

Remember too the power of coincidence. The hard disk in my laptop died soon after running a CPDN wu that crashed the CPDN software. I happen to know about the mug of tea that was poured over the corner of the machine where the HD was installed. If the tea-donor had not owned up I'd probably be blaming CPDN right now...

One thing for all users to bear in mind is that power saving settings may need adjusting to cope with a DC project.

Maybe your operating system powers the hard disks down if they are not used for so many minutes. This power saving works well if the machine is used for (say) word processing, but not when a progam runs 24/7 and writes to disk regularly. With the wrong set of parameters the disk could end up stopping and starting every few minutes, which produces more wear than running it continuously.

Many versions of windoze place this option under display properties (!!??), so right click on an empty part of the desktop, choose screen saver tab, choose 'settings' under the energy saving features of the monitor (!!??), and along with the settings you'd expect to find in that location is a setting for the hard disks. Choose to power down hard disks 'never'. (In fairness to that nice Mr Gates you can get to the same options through power management in the control panel, and through the power icon (if any) in the systray.)

On my laptop I have BOINC set to run only when I am using mains power (BOINC general prefs), and the hard disks set to be always on in that case (power settings in windoze). Under battery power the hard disks power down after 10min at the same time as the screen switches off. (Or they will when I've fitted a new HD without the beverage option)

Hope that helps you regain confidence in the project.

Thank you, Gravywavy (neat handle), and everyone else who's responded. My faith in E@H is rekindled! The ThinkPad that crashed was bought used off eBay and caveat emptor certainly would apply in this case. I liked the "break it under warranty" suggestion, too. What's not to like?

Okay, HP Pavilion! Let's see what you're made of. Charge!!! Damn the torpedos!!! Full speed ahead!!!

Tom

I just picked up a new low-end HP machine for school and i run BOINC on it 24/7 with no added cooling or modifications. The way I figure it, if they can't build a machine that is able to utilize all of it's advertised resources, then they can replace the parts under warranty. I didn't buy a 3Ghz processor only to be able to use 50% of it. :)

So yes, BOINC is my burn-in program. LOL

Happy Crunching!