Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Questions about Powering Down equipment

This is topic Questions about Powering Down equipment in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Nils Hoover (Member # 6636) on 11-19-2012, 02:04 PM:

I am just trying to get some real info, to make an informed decision about some of my new digital equipment. Experience can be helpful, but is also prone to its own kind of mythology.

DCP Servers(GDC in my case)
I have read debates on this forum about shutting off servers or leaving them on. I am not interested in reopening a debate on this, but if any one has any real specific DATA about HD failure rates relating to power-cycles, please share it!
I did find this study By Google which indicates that high power-cycles had almost no effect on the life of the HDDs but as acknowledged in the summary of power cycles affect on drive life, it doesn't seem to be on a daily scale, but more on the "my server glitched, restart it" scale (which could be statistically less often). So again, any real data would be appreciated.

Projectors (Christie CP2210 in my case)
3 things.
First Our installers told us if we shut down our projector, we should restart the server, as it is more likely to (through some sort of connection error) cause an error in the middle of a show. Clearly that ties into the same issue of shutting the server down, there is no point if it significantly increase the chance of a failure.

Second, if it does need to be restarted in any situation, what order should it be restarted? Projector -> Server correct?

Third, Hooked up to our ventilation system, the fan runs all night on standby mode, what are the hazards to turning the projector off completely on a nightly basis?

MISC.
Sound Processor
AMPs
Hazzards for either of these? (we have always shut them off with our film projectors)

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 11-19-2012, 02:42 PM:

You really shouldn't bring up religious matters into this forum!

- Carsten

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-19-2012, 02:48 PM:

Well we have a GDC server, and for the first year and a half of operation we shut it down every night. About the first of this year, we started leaving it on all the time. Besides being better for the equipment, it was a nightly time saver and made it possible to start a movie ingesting and go home without waiting for it to finish.

Then about two months ago, we lost a hard drive. GDC, to their credit, replaced ALL of our hard drives free-of-charge even though the machine was several months past warranty. So....did the many power cycles contribute to the failure? Hard to say, but it certainly didn't help.

We shut our projector down as far as standby every night. There doesn't seem to be any conflict between it and the server from doing this. (NEC projector)

We shut the sound system down completely every night (Dolby CP650, QSC amps and crossover). Since there are no hard disks or other moving parts in the components except fans, doesn't seem like a big deal to shut those down.

Posted by Nils Hoover (Member # 6636) on 11-19-2012, 02:52 PM:

Thanks for the reply. Is there any order in which the server/projector should be started up? or does it not matter much?

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 11-19-2012, 03:34 PM:

Best is to have the projector running when you start the server, both for HD-SDI/CL and IMB systems.

How many shows do you run each day?

- Carsten

Posted by Nils Hoover (Member # 6636) on 11-19-2012, 04:31 PM:

currently We run 3 on weekdays and 4 on weekends (per projector).

Also, I realized that the projector issue isn't just what the installers say, when I put the projector on standby mode, and bring it out, I have to restart it, it seems.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 11-19-2012, 04:41 PM:

With that schedule, benefit of shutting down vs. leave them running is probably 50/50 by my intuitive estimation ;-)

A server restart/reboot is not necessarily a power-cycle.

- Carsten