Hibernate or not?

[wesman]

What is the difference between hibernating a computer versus shutting it down? I think there is a significant power savings with hibernation, but are there any cons about it?

[Ritho]

There are usually three power down options available in Windows. Shutdown Hibernate or Sleep (Standby)

Hibernation involves a full power down of the computer just like shutting down. The difference with hibernation is that all the active processes in your RAM and the system state is saved to a hibernation file so everything can be resumed when you power your system back on. Standby or Sleep mode is quite different than hibernate as the system state is saved to the RAM and then the hard drives and processor and other components are put into low or no power consumption state.

Hibernate is often called "Suspend to disk"
Standby or Sleep is called "Suspend to Ram"

[Jojo Yee]

Both hibernating and shutting down the system result the same in powering off the computer.

Personally I set the Hibernate to be the default button and I prefer to use it to power off the computer. In my experience, Hibernate is faster than Shutdown in these two ways:

1. Powers off the PC (saving system state is fast enough to me).
2. Resumes Windows when the PC is powered on again.

In particular, for item 2, resuming Windows after hibernating is very much faster than starting Windows after shutdown.

[tushR]

Hibernation is nice!
But if you install / uninstall lot of software's then restart works better (required) as they write entries in run once that will only work when you restart.

For better performance once in a while (say monthly) disable hibernation > restart PC > again enable hibernation (this deletes and recreates hibernation files - hence takes care of corruption).

Also if you use encryption (say Bitlocker, Pointsec etc) then make sure you defragment you hard disc regularly (atleast once a month) - as encryption and hibernation doesn't go hand in hand that well (my personal experience).

[Ritho]

I might add, even if you don't use encryption, a hibernation file location (root of boot partition) can still suffer from fragmentation over time, so defragmenting your system partition will help with both hibernate and resume speeds.

[danjmilos]

If you only use hibernation your computer will not make any restore points. Restore points are created automatically in the start-up process. My computer is started every morning before I leave for work, screen saver comes on after 10 minutes of no activity, monitor turns off after 20 minutes and hibernation starts 2 hours later. After my wife and I are done with the computer for the day we shut it off and then I start it the next day. I agree with Jojoyee my computer comes out of hibernation a lot faster than it starts up.

Dan

[Ritho]

Restore points are sometimes created when programs are installed as well.

[danjmilos]

Ritho,

Very true! But I have not installed any new programs of any consequence or uninstalled that would have also created a restore point. A cold start on my computer takes 3 minutes max maybe 40 seconds longer than coming out of hibernation so the once a day start-up does not mean to much in the scheme of things, so for the few more restore points to me it is worth it.

Dan

[Rottie]

I use Hibernation all the time and have done for years when leaving the set for long periods and knowing I will need it again. For times when I am not going to return to it, I shut down.

For occasions where I expect to come back on it soon, say in the evening where I often leave it and keep returning for another playtime, I use Standby.

As you all know, Hibernation takes longer to load up than Standby, but it does not matter to me, I have all the time in the world - within reason.
Hibernate = ~ power shut down : Standby = very small power tick-over.

Both procedures cause the Local connection to be cut, but that is a good thing, nothing can come in and it soon re-connects on resumption.

The technicalities of whether it stores the data in RAM or on hard disk is of no interest to me. Very rarely, I get a warning that the VM is too low and simply reboot. Perhaps this is nothing to do with Hibernate or Standby.

[eyeb]

Hibernate isnt a complete powerdown though. It still uses a little power, very little though and a laptop can hibernate for months without any data loss. A complete shutdown would be indefinate i believe. Forgot where I read this but I'd imagine you could test this by hiberating and removing powercord and battery. But I rather not risk data loss for this test :S.

I prefer to shutdown each night because if I need a fast boot I have xpud on dual boot which boots even faster than hibernating