Why You Need To Wait When Powering Off & Then On

WHY YOU SHOULD WAIT

It’s already turned off, why does waiting matter?

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” The cliche phrase that you’ve probably heard more times than you’d like when getting technical support. Whether this is help with a phone, a computer or even your internet router, the first question will almost always be “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” You may recall a couple weeks back we wrote about why this work and that it’s a cliche because it does.

But what we didn’t touch on was why you should wait at least 30 seconds in between turning it off and then back on. Common sense would say that it’s already powered off (even unplugged!) so would waiting matter? The answer is a little electronic component called a capacitor (pictured above) that may be inside your device, they come in all sizes!

Without going into too much detail, a capacitor is able to do a wide range of jobs but one important feature is it can store electric energy. Since it can store electric energy, it can then be used to store information, how cool is that! Since a capacitor is able to store a form of information this means that when you turn your device off and quickly back on the capacitor doesn’t have time to ‘lose’ this information and it acts like you didn’t even turn the device off.

A good analogy to think of is emptying your kitchen sink of dirty dishwater and then refilling it with clean water. You can take the plug out but the water takes time to completely drain. A capacitor works the same way. You can take the plug out (turn the device off) but the water (electricity/charge) takes time to drain.