Is sleep mode harmful for a computer?

Solution 1:

Sleep mode is not damaging to the computer and in fact this article claims it should be used.Of course it uses more electricity than a fully shutdown computer; power still needs to be supplied to some circuits. Since RAM is volatile memory, RAM always needs to be supplied with electricity, otherwise it's contents is lost.

Mechanical parts with moving pieces are the fastest to wear out. Hard drives typically go first. The rest slowly degrades due to electrostatic damage and heat that gradually takes a toll. Have a read over this article, it has some good information regarding tests for hard drives.

So it may not be just your impression that the computer is slowing down. It is unlikely related to the fact you put it to sleep.

EDIT: I got the info about electrostatic damage and heat from here.

Solution 2:

• Sleeping your computer cannot damage your computer.
• Parts will wear out over time, but this has nothing to do with sleep
• You can just run the microsoft experience index (or any other benchmark) and see if the numbers are stable.