shutdown/sleep/hibernate power consumption? other tradeoffs?

[classybum]

hello all-

well, i may end up having a flurry of questions for everyone, so i hope its not a problem.

i'm just curious about differences between shutdown, standby and hibernate modes. i've done a bit of research and found that standby uses the most power, shutdown the least. shutdown/startup takes the longest, standby the shortest. i understand that standby puts the pc to sleep with contents of ram intact, whereas hibernate images ram contents to disk, then turns off, and then of course shutdown shuts down.

even when i've had my computer on standby for a day or so, i havent really noticed much of a battery drain. i would test this agian for specifics, but dont want to put my pc on standby at the moment..

is there any reason not to hibernate/standby the pc instead of shutting down?

could i get some feedback with your experience using standby and hibernate? i'm a fan of not leaving my computer on when its not in use, and if i can get away with just always leaving it in standby, i would. however, i'm wondering if there's any not obvious disadvantages to doing so.

thanks

[jdhurst]

You have described it very will for yourself. I do not use Hibernate chiefly because I don't want give up another gigabyte of disk. Maybe when I have an endlessly large hard drive I will use it.

So:
1. I standby during the day when going from A to B.
2. I shut down at the end of the day.
3. I do not hibernate (but it is a good tool).

I occassionally stand by overnight and there is no ill effect I can see.
... JD Hurst

[dr_st]

I never go to standby, except when the PC runs on batteries and I leave it unattended for a while and it goes to standby on itself, which almost never happens. Don't see the point in standby. It's not like it's bothering it when it's idling, and there can be (or at least have been in the past) various problems when resuming from standby. I just let it idle (eventually it will turn the LCD off) and that's it.

Recently I've discovered the joy of hibernate. Now, if I go from point A to point B, which requires disconnecting the laptop from the AC, I hibernate it. I like the fact that it consumes no battery at all (because the computer is off, as you noticed), and resuming takes much less time than botting up.

So why not do it all the time? Well, as said, some may experience various problems resuming, as with standby. But that's not too common. As JD mentioned, some may not want to give up the hard drive space needed for the hibernation file.

I guess that reason number 1 for shutting down is that after a while, the PC may become a bit bogged down and want a complete restart of the OS, which hibernation doesn't do. Also, some programs that you install may require a reboot. If I feel that my laptop is a bit bogged down, I reboot it. If I don't need to continue using it, I shut it down.

Note that I never hibernate my desktop, because I'd rather just leave it on and idling.

[jdhurst]

With respect to "moving": I disconnect Network Drives and disconnect the network before standing by. Then when I go to a new location and start, Access Connections will automatically reconnect to the correct new location (if I have been there before) and I connect new, different network drives. The same issue would affect hibernation. Any method, so long as you think it through, will work fairly reliably. ... JD Hurst

[GomJabbar]

I love Standby. In a very few seconds, you are back where you left off. Boot up takes somewhat longer. Hibernate is also slower than Standby to get to your desktop.

When you use Standby, make sure you don't make any hardware changes while in Standby, such as plugging in or unplugging a PC card, USB key, etc. This is what causes problems.

Also check Scheduled Tasks. Some Scheduled Tasks can bring the laptop out of Standby. Make sure you don't have this happen unexpectedly. Actually I use this feature as an alarm clock. I have scheduled an MP3 file to play at a certain time. When this time arrives, my laptop brings itself out of Standby and plays the MP3 file. If I don't respond, it goes back into Standby by itself after a set time (I chose 10 minutes). I make sure this is disabled when I fly, so the airline does not blow-up my ThinkPad.

[classybum]

ah, fantastic. thank you all for your input.

first off, i didn't realize that hibernate used no power. i just might find that useful. on the other hand, i might also disable it. i'm only sitting on 60GB of storage, and i'm about to upgrade from 512 to 1gb of ram. ugg. also, its good to know about not making hardware changes while the tp is in standby. that would not have occurred to me until i encountered problems. always good to know ahead of time.

and dr_st: the reason i'm curious about these various shutdown modes is due to the notion of moving parts and inevitable failure. By some fantastic stroke of luck, i've had three harddrive failures on my personal computers and 2 hard drive failures on my dad's network server within the last 6 years. i now look at pc's as ticking clocks, and await the next failure. as such, i try to focus on putting as few minutes as possible on the hard drive, etc so as to maximize their useful life.

thanks all