Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Hibernate Vs. Sleep Mode: Which is Best to Use and When?

If, like many individuals, you use your laptop for intermittent stretches at a time between meetings and other errands, knowing the difference between your computer’s sleep mode and hibernation mode is important. Each has its pros and cons when it comes to electrical power, battery life, processing speed and data storage.



You could think of sleeping as a nap and hibernating as a full night’s rest. Both options are used to save power. Sleeping refers to doing so by putting the user’s open documents and setting into memory. Hibernating means the computer is taking the user’s work and saving it into the computer’s physical storage for safe keeping until it needs to be retrieved. Since so many people now rely on being able to access computer data quickly and easily, these modes allow you to save power without needing to shut your computer down completely. Which option is best depends on your situation and on what type of laptop you are using.

For laptop users, the best option is usually to have the machine hibernate when you will not need it for an extended period of time. Laptop users rely on having battery power on the go. Hibernating essentially shuts most of the computer off. Therefore, there is less drain on the battery. It is particularly important to store material on the hard drive by hibernating if you know you will not be able to recharge the battery immediately.

If you use a notebook or laptop with a solid state drive, actions such as startup and boot up will take place more rapidly due to the fast data read and write capabilities of an SSD. The downside to an SSD can often be limited capacity and the fact that over time (we’re talking several years) an SSD can be worn down based on the number of data writes done to it. When a Windows laptop goes into hibernate it dumps the entire contents of memory onto the storage drive in a file named hiberfil.sys. If you have 8GB of memory in your SSD equipped laptop, this means that an 8GB chunk of data will have to be written to the SSD. Since an SSD laptop can often bootup from a cold start in 20 seconds or less, it’s often better just to shut the laptop down rather than wait for it to go into hibernate mode and potentially hog a lot of the drive capacity with the hiberfil.sys file.

A desktop computer, of course, has no battery option; it draws solely from a wall outlet for power. However, it is still important to save as much power as possible to reduce your monthly electric bill. Therefore, if you use either a desktop or a laptop plugged into the wall, you can use sleep mode to reduce your energy usage when you are away from your computer for a few minutes. When in this mode, your computer can be awakened much quicker than if it is hibernating. This is an advantage if you need quick access at frequent intervals. For example, this might be useful for a retailer who only periodically needs access to the computer to assist a customer, but wishes to be able to do so without a long delay. Therefore, putting information onto the hardware storage may waste valuable time when quick access is required.

The type of equipment, where it is used and how fast information is retrieved and processed by your storage device are all factors in determining whether to use sleep, hibernate or shut down to save power. Either way, it’s important to remember that conserving power preserves the computer, saves money and is environmentally responsible. Whether you choose the faster and more convenient sleep mode or the slower but more power efficient hibernation mode depends on your usage pattern and being educated about what works best for your particular hardware configuration.

Article Source:http://www.laptopreviews.com/hibernate-vs-sleep-mode-which-is-best-to-use-and-when-2012-04

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