Thinkpads Forum

Hey guys,

I gave my T60p to the repair center and, when I took my laptop out of the bag, the guy there told me that I should not use suspend mode while travelling with it. He told me that the HD heads weren't parked and were in a 0 zone, a rest zone. He wasn't 100% sure.

What do you guys think? Is it safe to use suspend mode while travelling?

Hello, you could always use hibernate. I use suspend all the time, but I don't travel with mine. Someone will answer you I'm sure.

I travel with my thinkpad suspended all the time. I don't even have APS installed. My hard drive never had an issue. Since most components other than memory is at powered off state, it's hard to imagine that drive's head is not at parked position.

sugo wrote:I travel with my thinkpad suspended all the time. I don't even have APS installed. My hard drive never had an issue. Since most components other than memory is at powered off state, it's hard to imagine that drive's head is not at parked position.

Um... yeah i have a hard time believing that.

Since the hard drive is turned off, what other position does it have?

My Thinkpads have traveled the world (including Lausanne!) since my original 755 series machines, always suspended and never a problem.

That's the primary reason the function is there, to safely transport the machines without having to shut them down.

James

I would not recommend using standby when traveling (defined as any longer period of time than, say, 10 or 15 minutes) but not because the hard drive may be damaged. I'd be more concerned that a momentary interruption of battery power would cause any data which had not been saved, to be lost. And even if there are no applications running in memory, there's still all of the Windows processes that are. With who knows how many open files. Why give Windows any grief the next time it gets powered up?

Personally, I rarely use standby. I hibernate the system, even if there's a chance that it will get woken up again in 5 minutes. Sure it takes a few more seconds but that way I don't have to worry about running the battery down if I don't get back to it. Plus it's more secure that way since I have set a hard drive password on my traveling system.

rkawakami wrote:I would not recommend using standby when traveling .... I'd be more concerned that a momentary interruption of battery power would cause any data which had not been saved, to be lost.

How often did battery power get momentarily interrupted on your laptops? Honestly, it never happened to me in the past 4 years since my first laptop. If it's a rare scenario, is the above recommendation merely a personal preference?

Personal preference. You are correct that it's probably a 0.01% chance of happening during normal usage. I have many systems which I often swap out batteries, memory, Ultrabay drives, etc. Not using standby means that I don't have to worry about it (no, I don't check the standby LED before yanking stuff ).

However, using hibernation isn't all that much trouble, it provides for some (limited) security as I'm using the HD password and I don't ever have to worry about uselessly draining the battery.

I like Suspend or Stand By as its called. I use it all the time. However when my ThinkPad is in the overhead bin of an aircraft, I always have it turned off.

I understand Ray's arguement about possible momentary loss of battery power causing you to lose your saved state, but generally speaking, even if this was to happen, it shouldn't be a big deal. Just always be sure to save any open documents before entering Stand By.

I once took an hour-and-a-half bus journey home with my thinkpad on in my bag (I left the zip open for ventilation) because it was in the middle of a long job, and it was fine. I wouldn't do it again though.

sugo wrote:I travel with my thinkpad suspended all the time. ... Since most components other than memory is at powered off state, it's hard to imagine that drive's head is not at parked position.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, I think memory is powered off as well.

Well ok, it seems like everybody on this thread used "suspend mode" and "hibernation" interchangeably. I don't really know what suspend mode is as the last time I've heard of it was 5-6 years ago. But, hibernation mode (the one that is under the "shutdown" pulldown menu in the Windows Task Manager, or Start Menu>Turn Off Computer, click shift and it appears instead of stanby, or Fn+F12 on Thinkpads) writes what ever it is on the memory, to the harddrive (hiberfil.sys) and shuts down the computer completely. On the next boot, it loads everything back from the HD into the memory again, instead of proceeding with the OS boot. So, RAM does not need to be powered on. You can easily proove this by removing the battery during a hibernation, the system will resume just fine.

hiyel wrote:
Well ok, it seems like everybody on this thread used "suspend mode" and "hibernation" interchangeably. I don't really know what suspend mode is as the last time I've heard of it was 5-6 years ago.

Memory is left on in suspend or standby(Fn+F4), thereby not needing to write the Windows state to the HD like hibernation does. If you click Turn Off Computer, you should get Stand By as an option, along with Hibernate if you have it enabled.

Purcy wrote:Memory is left on in suspend or standby(Fn+F4), thereby not needing to write the Windows state to the HD like hibernation does. If you click Turn Off Computer, you should get Stand By as an option, along with Hibernate if you have it enabled.

Ok, thanks.
So suspend and stand by are the same things then. And OP is talking about suspend (or standby) mode, not hibernate mode. Got it...