Leah Campbell Updated: Mar. 23, 2020
Anh Trinh is the managing editor at Geek with Laptop, a site that helps readers gain knowledge around all kinds of tech subjects. She explains that shutting down a computer is a way to power down all processes of the machine. “It’s very similar to a restart but with the exception that your computer won’t turn back on again until someone powers it up,” she explains. “This is especially useful if you plan to leave your computer for a while.”
“Shutting down a Windows computer actually creates a deep hibernation file that the PC later leverages to allow for Fast Startup. A restart, on the other hand, completely kills all processes, clears the RAM, and clears the processor cache,” according to ProPrivacy digital privacy expert Ray Walsh. “This is why a restart is the preferred method when completing a new install or uninstall and why a computer restarts during Windows Operating System updates.”
(I learned to shut down my all-in-one computer more often after the hard drive was affected by the heat of staying on too long.)
“A Mac is a Unix environment in which everything is cleared during both ‘shut down’ and ‘restart,’” Walsh explains. “This makes both ‘shut down’ and ‘restart’ identical in that all processes, cache, and memory will be cleared, giving the machine a complete refresh.” In other words, there’s no real difference between a shut down or a restart for Mac users.