10

I have a Raspberry Pi B+ hooked up to my router and I leave it on all of the time, it rarely gets switched off. Does this cause any damaging effects to the Raspberry Pi?

Darth Vader
  • 4,096
  • 24
  • 42
  • 67
  • 1
    I've had one on 24/7 for a few years. Or actually, I had a B on for about 18 months, then I got a B+ and used it for the same thing instead. But both of them are perfectly fine. – goldilocks Jun 16 '15 at 16:07
  • 1
    Nothing lasts forever. I run a couple all the time and haven't notice any side effects. Note, mine are headless. – Registered User Jun 17 '15 at 03:52
  • 1
    The rpi itself won't be harmed, but the SD will break some time. – bot47 Jun 17 '15 at 16:27
  • See [this link][1] for more info about this subject. [1]: http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/325/is-the-raspberry-pi-suitable-for-running-continuously-24-7/14642#14642%20%22this%20link%22. – GeertVc Jun 19 '15 at 03:55

3 Answers3

13

Provided you have no heat issues (check with /opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp) you can leave your rPi running for all eternity. That's the beauty of the device paired with a well-written OS like raspbian which does not (or hardly) suffer from memory leaks etc.

Phil B.
  • 5,013
  • 14
  • 30
9

No, leaving the RPi on all the time won't harm it at all. The RPi is designed to be an embedded device, and run in an enclosed space. Unless you have it somewhere stupid like an active dryer vent, your device should be fine.

You are actually far more likely to damage the device by constantly unplugging it.

Jacobm001
  • 11,797
  • 7
  • 45
  • 56
  • 4
    Just to round out the plug/unplug issue, it's a general principle for all electronics that the fastest way to wear them out is to constantly cycle the power, which causes them to heat up and cool down repeatedly. That's physical stress. Supposedly leaving them warm (on) is no worse than leaving them cold (off). – goldilocks Jun 16 '15 at 16:09
  • 3
    This reminds me of a sensationalist media report of a light bulb which just turned 100 years old, and it's still functioning "despite never been turned off!!!". Actually, it's **because** it was never turned off. – vsz Jun 17 '15 at 06:16
  • 4
    @goldilocks, leaving them warm is slightly worse than leaving them cold, since unpowered circuits don't experience [electromigration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration). For something that is merely warm rather than hot, you're looking at wear-out times of decades. – Mark Jun 17 '15 at 09:34
7

The only thing wearing out is the sd-card if you write to it (for instance log-files). There are lots of guides how to avoid write accesses. For instance you can mount /var/run,/var/log and /tmp in ramfs and tmpfs

a snipped from my fstab:

none            /var/run    ramfs   size=5M,noatime   0 0
none            /var/log    tmpfs   size=5M,noatime   0 0
none            /tmp        ramfs   size=50M,noatime,mode=1777 0 0
joe_zeroh
  • 71
  • 2