Is there a downside to hibernation? I'm trying to figure out why all computers don't just hibernate instead of powering off, and I can only come up with two reasons:

1. Uses extra HDD space (but in today's day and age, it's not like it's 20% of your total drive space.)

2. Doesn't save system changes or something after you've installed a program.

The second reason is what I'd guess would be important. In that case, as long as you completely shut down once a day or so (or every time you install or update a program) is there no other downside to hibernation?

I prefer to use S3 suspend (Suspend-to-RAM), almost-instant power off and power on without losing anything (unless there's a power cut when its "off", but I can live with that).

Same here. Having a UPS helps.

Some devices at times (rarely) have issues with stand-by and hibernation though.

Sleep rocks (although i'm terribly confused between S1 and S3 modes) - shame that my PC just seems to "die" and be unable to resume when i try it on mine :X

AFAIK Hibernate takes just as long to shut down as as an ordinary Shut-Down, and then takes Just as long to boot - little gain imo.

Quote from Jakg :

Sleep rocks (although i'm terribly confused between S1 and S3 modes)

S1 "Power-on-Suspend" (POS ) just suspends the processor as far as I know, everything else remains "on" so it doesn't do much. In S3 "Suspend-to-RAM" (STR) everything is shut down except the RAM, which is kept powered using the ATX standby power. The result is the system powers down just like you would have shut it off, but is ready to resume from the same state it was left at since RAM contents are not lost.

Yay - I'm sure that i remember reading that if the BIOS is set to one and the OS to another it won't sleep - time to check they're both in S3 mode.

Only thing i miss from my old PC was sleep mode - time to fix it!

the problem with hibernation (or any other form of non memory clearing suspend mode) is cruft
of course it presents itself in a different form than the usual use of the term refering to long term use of a single installation of your os but its lurking in the shadows and will slow your last boot over time
with windows in desktop use its rare to see uptimes of more than 4-5 weeks and youre likely to get a tangible increase in speed with a clean reboot after that amount of time

Quote from Jakg :

AFAIK Hibernate takes just as long to shut down as as an ordinary Shut-Down, and then takes Just as long to boot - little gain imo.

in that case you probably havent used it much
power down will take a bit longer but powering back up should be much faster (unless you have like 10 bioses to go though that make up the bulk of your boot times)

In other words, every week at least it's probably a good idea to just reboot to sort of refresh everything... gotcha.

I didn't know about S3, and I kind of want to do that, but I have no idea how to enable it. My bios is set to do both S1 AND S3, but I tried standby and it went into S1. How do I set Windows to go into S3?

EDIT: Ahaha, the wonders of regedit. It's workin' now.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

How do I set Windows to go into S3?

You can't, S3 hasn't been released yet.

Oops :doh: Wrong S3....

Hmm, you guys actually use suspend and hibernate? All I do is shut down the monitor when I'm done. I never leave any work open when I leave the PC. Perhaps in the name of saving the environment, I'll start to use it instead of just turning off the monitor.

I personally, IF I shutdown intentionally, will hibernate, just to save me the hassles of re-opening several programs when it starts back up. Typically if I'm gonna be restarting into OSX, I'll also hibernate, to save my session, same as if I'm rebooting outta OSX into windows, I'll hibernate my OSX session (difficult to set up, but effective), something Boot Camp was supposed to have when Leopard came out, but was pulled quite quickly from the website advertising the features.

Quote from Jakg :

AFAIK Hibernate takes just as long to shut down as as an ordinary Shut-Down, and then takes Just as long to boot - little gain imo.

i'd have to disagree with that one jack. It may depend on the PC. AFAIK all data stored in ram gets written to the hard disk when hibernated, however on starting up it mearly loads all that data back into RAM. the point im making is that for me, it is far quicker to hibernate and start up rather than shut-down and standard boot.

May depend on the PC... But for me its definatly quicker.

im most likely gonna sound like abit of an idiot, but is hibernate the same as putting the machine to sleep?

If that is the case, then by no means does it boot up the same rate as a normal shutdown/turnoff. In fact, my monitor takes longer to turn on than my PC coming out of sleep mode!

But ye, i always put my PC to sleep if im not gonna be using it for another 30 minutes or so.

Sleep != Hibernation

Sleep = low power state, where either CPU is turned off/low speed or everything is "shut off" but RAM state is kept with power, if power is lost, Session is lost.
Hibernate = RAM state saved to hard-disk, full shutdown. No power use, can unplug PC, take it elsewhere/leave it unplugged, plug it back in, resume session on power up.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Sleep = low power state, where either CPU is turned off/low speed or everything is "shut off" but RAM state is kept with power, if power is lost, Session is lost.
Hibernate = RAM state saved to hard-disk, full shutdown. No power use, can unplug PC, take it elsewhere/leave it unplugged, plug it back in, resume session on power up.

right, plus, hibernating is usefull to pause pending operations like converting large videos (wich likely take a good amount of time), because of a friend is in need of some components from my pc to determine what component died on his machine and returns it after 20 minutes.
I won't lose my 0,00% of processed video data.
i can dismantle the pc, transport it elsewhere, re-combine ALL components back toghether and continue where i "paused" the OS.
Technically a OS could be cloned that way, using the exact same parts in another machine.
i love that option, but i'm getting concerned about large memories beeing transferred to HDD and back (like 32GB) i bet a standard boot would be faster in any case, compared to hibernation.

regards

I use hibernation a lot; stand by has not been stable enough, too much issues with waking up. It may go for weeks without a real reboot.

Quote :

Sleep = low power state, where either CPU is turned off/low speed or everything is "shut off" but RAM state is kept with power, if power is lost, Session is lost.
Hibernate = RAM state saved to hard-disk, full shutdown. No power use, can unplug PC, take it elsewhere/leave it unplugged, plug it back in, resume session on power up.

Wrong as far as Vista is concerned. On Vista, what you describe as Sleep is in fact Standby. Sleep on Vista is Standby followed by automatic Hibernation when the system has been on Standby for a certain period of time. If that makes sense It's an incredibly useful feature.

EDIT: Please tell me if I've been getting it wrong.

Can someone post a quick summary of how to activate each S mode? Which ones need BIOS settings, registry settings etc? (Win XP)

Which one is the mode where even the PSU fan is supposed to stop? I remember trying it a few years ago only to find that the fans didn't stop and that my TV card remote would stop working.

OK, did it myself.

S1:
Useless, shuts off Video and HDs, everything else keeps running. Happens when you click on Standby when shutting down.

S3:
Turns off everything including fans, keeps everything in RAM, PC just sits there. Needs to be activated in BIOS (labeled "Suspend to RAM (STR)" in my case) and Windows Power Management must NOT be set to "Desktop", otherwise fans will stay on. Entered like S1, by clicking Standby.

S4:
Hibernate mode, pretty crap, slow, needs lots of HD space and crashes on my machine. Doesn't need any power though so good for Laptops. Needs to be activated in Windows Power Management. Enter by holding shift before clicking the Standby button.

So I'll be using S3 for a while and see how I like it. Has anyone measured how many Watts it pulls from the Wall Socket?

I don't know about wattage and stuff, but S3 works like a charm. Been using it for a few weeks now. My desktop acts as a base station for me and my roommate to watch TV, movies, listen to music, play games, or do anything in our dorm room using the projector. It was kind of stupid though using it as the whole media center when it took 2-3 minutes to boot just to watch TV. Now it takes literally 5 seconds. I've awakened it countless times and not once yet has it had trouble.

Also, some motherboards have the option to do S1, S3, or BOTH as mine did. However, I couldn't figure out what setting to use in WINDOWS to use S3, so I had to set my mobo to JUST S3 to get it to work.

Bottom line is, I dunno why anyone would ever turn off their PC anymore.

Just measured with a cheap plastic measuring thingy I bought a while ago.

Windows desktop: 90 W
S3: 9 W
PC Off: 7 W

That means the PC needs roughly 10€ per year just for being plugged in, and using S3 doesn't have any significant effect.

But the real question is wtf is the PSU using 7 W switched off? I know it's not much but it's still a waste.

Quote from J.B. :

Just measured with a cheap plastic measuring thingy I bought a while ago.

Windows desktop: 90 W
S3: 9 W
PC Off: 7 W

That means the PC needs roughly 10€ per year just for being plugged in, and using S3 doesn't have any significant effect.

But the real question is wtf is the PSU using 7 W switched off? I know it's not much but it's still a waste.

Did you check it even with nothing plugged in, or like a lamp that is off plugged in. The meter could be off as you said it was cheap.

EDIT: Also, while the computer is off, it uses a little bit of power to keep the time accurate aswell as a few other things.

USB mouse (wireless) and printer (off) were connected, maybe that accounts for a part. Switching the switch on the back of the PSU makes the measurement go to 0 W.

I know the wireless mouse does account for part of it, since I know I can reactivate mine from S3 by wiggling the mouse. So that must be getting SOME sort of power...

...by the way, how do you measure your wattage? Do you have an APC or something?

i dunno if any of you has been around pcs long enough but there was a time before the on off switch was a button ie a time when it worked as a real switch
the point is if you keep your pc connected to the power line it will draw power to drive the mainboard in an idle state in which it can sense the button being pushed ... besides that you also have the electronics for wake on lan wake on usb etc drawing power

conclusion ... get yourself a multiple socket with a switch if you want you pc to be truely off
at least to me the boot time in the morning is hardly an issue ... by the time ive changed my clothes the pc is up and running