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Hello,
Due to power cuts and also since my mac mini doesn't have monitor(as i use as mirror in my mac) i switch off the power directly at night. in the morning once i switch on the power, the mac mini starts from where i left off.
My question is due to power cuts and deliberate power down. does the mac hardware get affected or is this a problem ?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Gani_MAC wrote:
Yes i was doing by switching off the powerchord button.
What Mac Mini model?
In some, cutting power from the wall has one disadvantage: it causes the internal backup battery, or "PRAM" battery to engage all night. The battery is there to retain user settings when the computer is without wall power occasionally, such as when the computer is removed from power for service or moving. Routinely cutting all power to the computer can cause the battery's life expectancy to plummet from years to months. Been there, done that.
Newer Macs do not throw out as many oddball symptoms as older ones when the PRAM battery dies prematurely, but it can cause the computer to forget where its startup volume is located. Although batteries are cheap, the labor to reach them is not. Battery replacement requires a non-trivia teardown to access and change.
When the computer is off but still connected to wall power, a tiny bit of current bypasses the power supply to maintain settings. The amount of power used is misniscule.
Gani_MAC wrote:
Yes i was doing by switching off the powerchord button.
What Mac Mini model?
In some, cutting power from the wall has one disadvantage: it causes the internal backup battery, or "PRAM" battery to engage all night. The battery is there to retain user settings when the computer is without wall power occasionally, such as when the computer is removed from power for service or moving. Routinely cutting all power to the computer can cause the battery's life expectancy to plummet from years to months. Been there, done that.
Newer Macs do not throw out as many oddball symptoms as older ones when the PRAM battery dies prematurely, but it can cause the computer to forget where its startup volume is located. Although batteries are cheap, the labor to reach them is not. Battery replacement requires a non-trivia teardown to access and change.
When the computer is off but still connected to wall power, a tiny bit of current bypasses the power supply to maintain settings. The amount of power used is misniscule.
You're not saving anything by doing what you're doing. It is nearly certain that the Mini is consuming more power than it would if you simply let it sleep according to Energy Saver.
When you restart a Mac, it has to load all those previously loaded apps, rebuild cache files, reestablish communication with any number of Internet services you use... etc. That takes time, during which there are greater power requirements than running in an idle state. Then there's the problem of replacing its NVRAM battery, used to retain some memory contents whenever mains power is removed. That will accelerate the need for its eventual replacement, which you'll have to pay for. Otherwise they will last for ten years at a minimum.
A sleeping Mini consumes less power than a night light. Half a watt. Negligible. Energy cost < 25¢ per year.
Apple thinks about these things. Actually, they obsess about them, so we don't have to.
In short the answer to your question yes the hardware is affected, and yes it's a problem. But it's your Mac, your energy bill, and your repair costs to bear, so do as you please.
When you say that you "switch off the power directly at night", do you mean that you do it properly, by selecting the Shut Down… item in the Apple () menu?
Or that you just pull the AC plug, or turn off a switch on a power strip? That would not be proper – and even though APFS is not as fragile as exFAT or FAT32, you don't want to be causing those sorts of power interruptions if you can avoid it.
Use the Apple menu () and select Shutdown… instead of slamming the operating system down by switching off the power. Once it has shut down, you can optionally turn off the power strip, and then re-enable it in the morning before pressing the power button on the Mac to restart the operating system.
Note that as long as you can get to the Shut Down … menu item, you should not shut down the Mac by holding down the Mac's power button for a long time.
Holding down the power button for a long time forces an unplanned shutdown, whether the OS is ready, or not.
Allan Jones wrote:
Routinely cutting all power to the computer can cause the battery's life expectancy to plummet from years to months. Been there, done that.
Acknowledging that different users have different experiences ...
I shut down & cut the power whenever my Macs are not in active use. That would be nights, weekends, vacations and even during the day when I am away from the house.
In 20+ years with 10 Macs of my own and 100+ that I have managed (minis, iMacs, eMacs), I have only ever had to replace 2 PRAM batteries ... one was in an 18 year old eMac and the other in a 12 year old Core2Duo iMac ... despite being unpowered more than they were ever powered.
As for "accelerate the need for its eventual replacement" as someone indicated above, I have had no such experience. No Mac I have ever owned or managed has failed or had any problems as a result of being shut down, powered off and powered back on daily. As a matter of fact, I still have every one of my own except an eMac that I recycled and an iMac G5 that I sold.
It is not a problem ... and you are saving energy by powering it off.
Yes i was doing by switching off the powerchord button.
It's not great for the HW or SW, but I think the power surge when the power comes back on may be worse.
How do power cuts impact Mac mini's hardware?
