Standby v. Hibernate?

[nsuperman86]

What are the advantages/disadvantages of Standy and Hibernate modes?

From what I gathered they are very similar except one keeps the hard disks on while the other turns them off. I like keeping some programs open and don't want them to lose connection when I am not at the computer. Mainly for when I am file transferring or using online programs like AOL Instant Messenger. Would hibernate be better for these circumstances?

[Daniel]

The hard drive turns off in both stand by and hibernate.

The difference is that in stand by, the information in your RAM is kept, and while in hibernate, the information in your RAM is stored to the hard disk.

Advantages and disadvantages:

Stand by: Putting a computer into stand by and taking it out of it is much faster compared to hibernate. Uses a slight bit of power because the RAM has to be powered.

Hibernate: No power consumption but takes more time. Also consumes a good chunk of HDD space, same amount as your RAM.

If you're doing a file transfer, you can't use either because either one is as if you're turning off the computer.

[bootleg2go]

In hibernate mode the entire contents of your RAM are written to the hard drive and the notebook is completely powered off, so it is not using any power at all. Hibernate will use disk space equal to your ram size.
Advantages:
When you power on your notebook will be just as it was before it went into hebernate.
The notebook will use no power.

Disadvantages:
coming out of hibernation is not that much faster than powering on from a full shutdown.
The possibility of corrupting your OS is much higher than using standby, people are always having problems with hibernation, in fact I thought those problems were a thing of the past so I started using it. After no problems for two days all of a sudden when coming out of hibernation for some reason it asked for my password, after entering the password it would not take it. For some reason it defaulted to the admin account, so I entered the admin password and after getting logged in I found that my user account was corrupted and XP no longer could use it. To make a long story short I'm lucky I always keep a recent full backup and ghosted the old image back on. It would have been back to the recovery disks otherwise. After that episode I found that hibernation was not worth it, standby is much faster to go into and very quick to come back out of and it is much more stable. The only disavantage is that standby uses power, on my thinkpad I can count on it using about 1% battery power /hour.

Some people may not have any problem with hibernation, I think it is very dependent on many things like installed and running software, data in all the caches and much more...it is very complicated and just one small mistake can ruin you OS.

Jack

[2112]

hello. I posted about this subject earlier and have since talked to a couple of people, and as I understand: It is ok to have "Standby" as your normal mode of "Shutdown", or at least in my case. I use my Thinkpad daily, but sometimes not for hours at a time. I now just close my lid, it goes to Standby, and I'm all good...even overnight. Had mine for over a week now, wakes up fast and I've encountered no problems. I was told to shut down from time to time just to work out any kinks. I've also gone so far as to disable hibernate....is what I'm doing ok?

[DavidNZ]

I've tried hibernate recently on an X40 with sometimes strange results: shift keys not working; Outlook 2003 crashes; periodic freezes. After seeing others with more perilous problems, I might abondon this practice!

David

[mdarnton]

I suspect the best way to figure out what works best is to try each and see what suits you and your particular computer. I like standby, but my computer consistently does strange things coming out of it, like losing stuff attached to the USB ports, for instance. But from hibernate it's always fine.

[JHEM]

David and 2112,

I'll go on record once again that I'm not a fan of hibernation, having seen too many instances of problems arising like those that Jack experienced.

Admittedly, most of those problems occurred on older machines running W98 or W2K, but I've heard of enough problems occurring under XP that nothing appears to have changed enough to make me think that I should begin using hibernate rather than standby.

My T40 is "on" 24/7, spends approx. half that time in standby and wakes up immediately every time.

Regards,

James

[jsmit86]

I use hibernate almost exclusively vs. rebooting for daily use.

I have had almost no issues, except for 1 time where it would not take my password on startup. I just did a cold boot, and have had no further issues.

I sometimes use suspend when I just need to take a break for a few minutes.

[K. Eng]

I'll put in a good word for Hibernation. I've used it almost exclusively for a whole year on the same Windows XP SP1 install and I've had 0 problems.

Then again, I don't use much except Word & Excel 2000, Firefox, and the Editplus text editor (and AIM, forgot about that).

[PaulB]

I have noticed that if I go on standby while running this certain application I have which makes heavy use of the graphics card (uses DirectX), things are quite flaky when I return from standby. I now realize that if that application was running when I went into standby, I need to restart the application after coming out of standby (thereby re-initializing the graphics stuff it uses). Otherwise I'm looking for trouble...

It looks like the ATI 9600 graphics card does not handle standby too well when certain graphic "functions" have been turned on (functions that are not usually used in everyday use).

PaulB
T42

[nikemen]

There is a thread with somebody who is using hibernation, and losing battery power, which isn't good. I have a similar problem but maybe not as extreme.

I will say though, that when in standbye, I am losing LOTS of battery power. I would put it at 10-15% a day. That is a lot. By day two, the LT is in hiberation already.

I never had this problem with my A20