- Joined
- 24 Jan 2002
- Messages
- 12,388
users SHOULD hibernate
true, though due to some hardware restrictions, not everybody will be able to.
first some comparisons between standby, hibernate, and shutdown
Standby is supposed to spin hard drives down and bring power consumption down so that cooling mechanisms can also be turned off...all this while maintaining power to physical memory so data in ram isn't lost...this makes for super fast sleep and super fast resume....this is best case scenario.
Some desktop machines don't actually have power controls that will be able to have hardrive spin down and still maintain the power that's needed to keep data in RAM, so standby won't work that well on these machines.
Now, when in standby the system isn't "running" even though in some systems the fans may be on! (maintaining the power supply unit, which in some machines need to stay in full power mode to maintain RAM, and the fans will be invoked)...in standby, you might think the system is running because the fans are on, but the system isn't running.
In standby,CPU isn't executing any instructions (it can't process interrupts) and it's in a "low power" "sleep".
Data in memory are held Standby...most devices are powered down completely...now, since a powered off device loses its user info, those devices have to save it's data in RAM...thus, they'll be able to resume when called sometimes without reading from the hardrive.
There are devices that are enabled to wake the system when a user invokes that device, a mouse, a keyboard, a monitor...this is discriminatory to the manufacturer.
on my laptop, the only hardware that can wake the box is the power switch!!!, nothing else wakes this thing up
as told, some machines have to keep the fans spinning...however, hardrive could still spin down, and this is a much lower power consumption then with the system on, but not as low as hypbernate...Laptop power controllers are usually better at this.
now, hibernate is similar, EXCEPT, RAM contents are saved on disk instead of in RAM...therefore, RAM can be powered off.!
Obviously, the rest of the machine can therefore be powered down as well... more devices can be powered down in hibernate than in standby, and hibernate uses virtually no power, (except possibly a miniscule amount for sleep state for the devices empowered to "wake" the system), while standby uses quite a bit more.
with both hibernate and standby when you wake the computer, the OS doesn't boot, and that is sweet if you can get it to work, you won't need to save, you won't need to close your applications, nothing.
Something not too many people know is that the os will actually try a few different "standby states"...starting with the one that uses the least amount of power...deepest is called "s3"...the os tries that first to see if any devices have trouble with it...it then tries "s2, "s1" respectively, and this can actually change from standby to standby depending on what the user has running
true, though due to some hardware restrictions, not everybody will be able to.
first some comparisons between standby, hibernate, and shutdown
Standby is supposed to spin hard drives down and bring power consumption down so that cooling mechanisms can also be turned off...all this while maintaining power to physical memory so data in ram isn't lost...this makes for super fast sleep and super fast resume....this is best case scenario.
Some desktop machines don't actually have power controls that will be able to have hardrive spin down and still maintain the power that's needed to keep data in RAM, so standby won't work that well on these machines.
Now, when in standby the system isn't "running" even though in some systems the fans may be on! (maintaining the power supply unit, which in some machines need to stay in full power mode to maintain RAM, and the fans will be invoked)...in standby, you might think the system is running because the fans are on, but the system isn't running.
In standby,CPU isn't executing any instructions (it can't process interrupts) and it's in a "low power" "sleep".
Data in memory are held Standby...most devices are powered down completely...now, since a powered off device loses its user info, those devices have to save it's data in RAM...thus, they'll be able to resume when called sometimes without reading from the hardrive.
There are devices that are enabled to wake the system when a user invokes that device, a mouse, a keyboard, a monitor...this is discriminatory to the manufacturer.
on my laptop, the only hardware that can wake the box is the power switch!!!, nothing else wakes this thing up
as told, some machines have to keep the fans spinning...however, hardrive could still spin down, and this is a much lower power consumption then with the system on, but not as low as hypbernate...Laptop power controllers are usually better at this.
now, hibernate is similar, EXCEPT, RAM contents are saved on disk instead of in RAM...therefore, RAM can be powered off.!
Obviously, the rest of the machine can therefore be powered down as well... more devices can be powered down in hibernate than in standby, and hibernate uses virtually no power, (except possibly a miniscule amount for sleep state for the devices empowered to "wake" the system), while standby uses quite a bit more.
with both hibernate and standby when you wake the computer, the OS doesn't boot, and that is sweet if you can get it to work, you won't need to save, you won't need to close your applications, nothing.
Something not too many people know is that the os will actually try a few different "standby states"...starting with the one that uses the least amount of power...deepest is called "s3"...the os tries that first to see if any devices have trouble with it...it then tries "s2, "s1" respectively, and this can actually change from standby to standby depending on what the user has running