F@H hurts computer?

Should I shut down my computer once a day? I leave my comp on all the time to maximize the time I spend folding but I hear you should shut down your computer once or more a day to let it defragment and all that? Should I? I'd hate to loose valuable points because of it but I don't want to degrade performance with other tasks either.

 

First of all, F@H doesn't hurt your computer (since that seemed to be in question). Secondly, if you run windows, you will, more than likely, have to restart after a couple/few days anyway. But having to shut down doesn't have to do with F@H.

 

I leave mine on 24.7 and have had no problems yet, so i doubt u have to shut down

 

No I've never heard of anything to do with defragging shutting down. F@H is almost exclusively CPU intensive, only using your HD and network for saving progress and contact with server.

 

My computer is on pretty much all the time too. I wouldn't worry about it

 

I wouldn't have personally thought this to be true but my Dad came home from school and told me what some computer guy at his hightschool told him (pretty much what I wrote up top). It didn't really make much sense to me but I posted it up anyway. Still, thanks all (should have mentioned that in the 1st place and changed the title...)
I didn't phrase it too well there Fred, but what I was getting at was is it worth leaving my computer folding all the time or would I be better off giving it a break now and then? which you all answered anyway. Cool, appreciate it.

 

Depending on various factors you will need to occasionally restart or shut down your computer, when you begin to experience slow-downs in easy tasks after leaving it on you should restart, this is with windows anyway.

 

Yea, but f@h should be ok going all the time as long as your system itself is ok to being with, including good temps with good RAM everything should be ok.

 

The need to restart is there, but is unrelated to F@H. The defragging is the boot sector defrag. When Windows thinks it needs to defrag the boot sector, it will at start up, thats what hes referring to.

 

Yea, linux never needs to restart. Wow.

 

supposedly longhorn reduces reboot times by 70%, but...

we're talkin about microsoft here

 

lol thats very true. If it does though it will be great.

 

Okay, thanks everyone, though this thread is very old now so I've found the error in my ways, heck I was 15 and only had like 200 posts, I didn't know better.

 

ive left mine on for several weeks.. streaming music to an online radio station i dj for the entire time. and playing americas army and HL2 constantly. also had teamspeak running, msn, and mIRC all operational for the entire period.. never needed to reboot. and yes *gasp* it was with windows :-/ no crashes, no problems.. heck im as suprised as the rest.

 

What does F@H stand for? and what is folding? I leave my computer on until it slows down just to do simple things like open AIM or a winamp. Usualy takes a week or so, i do put it on standby here and there, THAT makes it screwy sometimes.

 

F@H=Folding at Home, read about it here: http://www.hardwareforums.com/showthread.php?t=2047:)