Shut Down or Hibernate?

Can anyone give an answer to something that has bothered me for ages?
Does it harm a computer turning it off after you are through, and then back on again later, rather than leave it running?
Does it do less harm to put it in Hibernate mode than to close it down completely?
Is it best to have the system close down the monitor and hard drive after a short period of non-activity and leave the cpu switched on?
Which of these is best for minimising wear and tear on the computer... or is there a fourth option?

 

Lol that debate comes up pretty frequently.. can probably find a few old threads if you run a search.


in my opinion its pretty much 6 of one half dozen of another. it was a major issue back when screen burn in was common and before harddrives spun down, etc. now its more of a personal preference i think.

I turn mine off at night simply because i dont want to listen to the fans. i leave it on during the day because i dont want to wait for it to boot.

I personally don't like hibernate because it uses too much disk space (often several hundred MB)

 

Since hibernate is the same as shutting the PC off, i.e., both truly power it off, there is no difference in "wear & tear" on the machine. Hibernate just saves the state of your work and brings you back to where you were, and is supposed to be a little quicker than a cold boot. OTOH, I think hibernate is a total waste of time, since if I'm turning off the machine, I want to REALLY save my work! I have all my machines set to turn off the monitor, and the rest of the stuff gets to run. I've had issues with machines spinning up the drives after I power them down on a number of computers, they seem to revert to PIO mode for some reason.

 

Thanks fellas. That was pretty much what I thought too, but thought I would check for other opinions.