Shut down vs. Sleep/Hibernate

I've heard that shutting down laptops or computers in general, is really harmful for the device and that putting it to sleep/hibernate is much better. Is this true?

Also, I don't know where to put this topic, so I hope this is the right place.

 

Well shutting down a computer isn't necessarily bad for it, but if you think about it, shutting a computer down forces the hardware (especially the HD) to go through a lot of work.

As for sleep and hibernate, I don't ever use hibernate personally, but I think that sleep is a useful tool (even though it does use power, I am usually plugged in so.).

For me, hibernate just doesn't have any benifit because it takes so long to get out of, and I don't have the need of my laptop basically using no power (which happens in Hibernate mode).

Hope this helps ya!

 

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. Since putting it in sleep makes the computer do minimal work but for a long time. And shutting down makes it do a lot of work for a short time.

I just wanna which one would be less harmful.

 

I don't believe shutting down a computer is harmful.

I usually hibernate because it's quicker. A normal boot takes 32 seconds, hibernate takes 20.

 

Shutting down or hibernation will cause the same hardware stress because a hibernating computer is powered down, the same as if it was off. The difference is that when you start it up the computer loads an image of the RAM at the time you hibernated from a file on the HDD instead of going through the Windows boot process.

I've used hibernation for years because it means I immediately get back to where I was with several applications already open with work in progress.

Sleep just puts the computer into a low power state from which it can restart instantly. I would never put a sleeping computer into a bag because they sometimes wake up too easily, but I will happily carry a hibernating computer on a long journey.

John

 

How serious is this 'stress'?

 

The only time you really need to use hibernate is if you need to have your computer cut off from power, but you also need to maintain your open session.

Until only a few days ago, I shut my laptop down completely every night. I've now started just putting into standby/sleep and make sure that I don't allow any devices or software applications to wake it back up.

It's great when I'm using my laptop in the airport terminal with my typical 20-odd-program session and I don't want to have to restore my session after I've boarded the plane. It's just 10 seconds, and it's right back where I left it.

I can't really see any downside to it. It's basically off at night (only draws a tiny amount of power to run the RAM), it only takes about 10 seconds to wake up, and I still have all my programs running with their open files, etc. A few networkable programs balk at it (PuTTY, Eudora, etc.), but it's still better than the three minutes it takes to boot everything. VMWare virtual machines even work without a hitch after waking from a standby.

As far as physical hardware stress goes, don't worry about it. We could argue to the end of the universe about longevity of always-on versus up-and-down stress of on-and-off. In the end, it's all a matter of whatever suits you best.

I shut my laptop off (or, rather, put it in standby) for nights because:

• It's in my bedroom and I couldn't sleep if it were on, emitting noise and light
• It's good general software security practice to leave a computer off when unused for extended periods of time

 

A bit of thermal expansion / contraction, perhaps more noticeable with notebooks that get very hot.

However, this thermal stress is insignificant compared with the physical stress that the average mobile notebook receives during its working life.

John

 

One thing of note though, is that if you have your computer password protected and have it go to sleep nothing will wake it from the sleep except you entering the password so you won't need to worry about a light sleeping laptop then.

 

But won't the computer be awake and waiting for the password?

John

 

Well at least for me (I'm running 32 bit Vista Ultimate) when I put it in sleep nothing will bring it to that screen except me opening the lid of my laptop, even programs that every 10 mins change my background or stuff like that that WOULD wake it from a simply LCD shut off....

Maybe it does awaken other computers, but for me nothing has thus far.

 

This is an interesting topic. It's making re-think the way I treat my ASUS <.<; I want to know how much physical wear and tear shutting-down has on the system compared to standby/hibernation. Is it neglible? Is one better than the other, disregarding energy usage? i'm probably just a worry wart lol, but it does concern me. I've been shutting my laptop for awhile now, standby never crossed my mind.

 

Well, I think if you are going to come back to your laptop within the next 24 hrs. (this time is debateable) then standby or sleep mode would be less work for your machine.

BUT, although putting your machine through a shutdown does force your hardware to do a lot of legwork, modern machines are really well suited to handle thousands (if not millions) of shutdowns without a cause for concern.

Even so, a lot of people think that it is simply just too hard on their machines and will still just have theirs run 24/7/365...

It really is all just preference... Hope this helps and answered your question!

 

what stress? Writing to the hard drive? Uh, the hard drive was engineered to be written to and read from. That is what it does. If you want to take the stress out of your system set the hard drive to never stop spinning, thus stopping the stress of start and stop which is much more stressful than just writing to the drive to hibernate.
Oh, and who actually has a 32second boot time?? Must not be a M$ system

 

There's a negligible amount of physical "stress" in turning off and on. The only thing you need to think about is balancing convinience (how long does it take for the computer to get ready) vs. power consumption. This computer's set to standby after 15 minutes and hibernate after 1 hour.

 

Hi, There is two different main things between hibernation and shutting down the computer that has already been mentioned. The fact is that shutting off/starting up the computer requires more energy than to have it hibernate throughout the night. And this is purely a consumption issue.

But, the fact is that even though it is more cost effective power vise, you might want to consider the fact that when you hibernate the computer you use up disk space from a fast load folder, this folder will create a "bump" in your hard drive which in the long run will make it slower.

Not saying theres a physical bump, im just saying that it will spread out the files along the hard drive, just as you would defragment your computer to rearrange all your files again since all files are mixed and matched, you might want to consider the speed that your computer will work at due to the fact that you spread out the documents with hibernation.

Saying that there is nothing wrong with hibernation, just saying that there is a greater need to defragment the computer earlier than that when you would shut down the computer for the night. But the stress issue as you mentioned before is nothing to be concearned about, you are more likely to get a graphics card error or dropping it while your carrying it, before the stress of shutting it down vs hibernation could ever effect you,

Though the defragmentation will be there since you are "spacing" out your files by adding and removing the hibernation folder every night.

So, if you know what a defragmentation of a harddrive is and that you know it takes about a nights work for it to occur than you might want to go with the hibernation. But if your afraid that the energy bill will run up due to having it hibernating through the night I wouldnt worry about it.


//Icenova :GEEK:

 

One thing I've noticed working with an Apple laptop for the last week or so is that they are very much built to be put to sleep, rather than shutdown. OS X is well built for this, but Vista has brought Windows a lot closer to the paradigm of "close it and forget it -- open it and its there".

With a journaled filesystem, Mac's don't run into the same fragmentation problems, but as a *nix derivative, Apple laptops sometimes run into log problems. Because a laptop is shut off (or put to sleep) when not in use (such as when you're sleeping), the system maintenance that would normally happen in the middle of the night (since *nix was originally built for always-on servers) never happens. There are some utilities to account for this, but you might also run into this on other *nix derivatives (if you installed Linux on your laptop, for instance). So far it hasn't been a problem at all, but it's something to keep in mind.

 

Shutdown:
Pro: Consumes "no" power, clears the memory, saves some changed states in Windows
Con: Takes long to shutdown a PC, takes even longer to boot up the PC, has to pass the BIOS, you have to close all your programs

Hibernate:
Pro: Consumes "no" power, is noticeable faster than shutdown regarding shutdown and boot up times, you can continue your work where you left it.
Con: Is still slower than sleep, needs space on your harddrive (the amount of RAM you have), has to pass the BIOS

Sleep:
Pro: Very fast, you can continue your work where you left it, does not need some HDD space, does not have to pass the BIOS
Con: Consumes some power


A few notes:
Sleep: How good and fast sleep works depends on the hardware and their drivers you use. If you have optimized hardware sleep will consume almost no power and work flawlessly, but if your laptop is not that optimized then it is possible that you will have problems with it.
Maybe not everything sleeps and so a bit more power is consumed, or your WLAN does not work after you sent it to sleep or or or.
If you use a Bios based password before you boot some poorly designed notebooks (especially older) will not ask you for this password if you sent your laptop to sleep mode.
If you hibernate or shutdown your laptop you have to press the power switch to turn on your laptop, if you use the the sleep mode you only have to hit a key on your keyboard or open the lid of the laptop (manufacturer-specific) or press the power button.
If your computer turns on automatically after you sent him to sleep mode then it's possible that your WLAN or your Modem woke up your computer. Often it is only a setting you have to change, or your hardware does not support sleep mode.

Hibernate: Hibernate does not fragment your harddrive. If you activate the Hibernate mode then a file will be created called hiberfil.sys, which is as large as your RAM. Each time you hibernate Windows writes the content of your RAM in this single file. This file is one large file which is not fragmented and does not fragment other files.
(To regular defrag your computer is also a good to speed up your machine and prolong your harddisks live)

I personally use sleep during the day. I walk, run while in its case and do everything with my computer while in sleep mode.
I send him to hibernate mode if the battery is low and don't use it for a longer time, or over the night.
I almost never use shutdown, only if I want to save some changed things or if the Toshiba BT has a weird failure again or such things.

 

I honestly just leave everything running 24/7
Thats why I moved to laptops because desktop would use more power consumption

 

S3 (Sleep 3) is the best thing ever. I use it on my desktop not sure if notebooks use this.

I turn off my notebook when not in use, sure there is "stress" there but your stressing your muscles just to keep your eyes open to read this right now. So get the point?

How many years now have we had notebooks and desktops? How many of them died because they were turned on and off on a regular basis?

I bet more people would fry there notebook leaving it in an incorrect power down state and letting it overheat in a bag then any sort of damage that could occur by shutting it down.

 

When I sleep i notice it has eaten some battery.
I haven't done hibernation

 

For me, I always put it in Hibernate mode whenever I'm traveling from class to class and I do shut it down after charging it up when I'm not using it for the rest of the day. It makes my life a little bit more simple.

 

Hibernation is good when I don't want to waste any battery but I want to keep all my applications up etc for my next boot up.

Stand bye/sleep is more for when I need to run from class to class, keeps my lappy from burning a hole in my backpack

 

Same as everyone. Sleep from class to class, hibernate when I know I won't be using the laptop for a while.

 

I leave my Eee PC on sleep 24/7. In fact I haven't shut it down once since I got it 0_0. The quick start ups for school are very very important for me at least.

 

For some reason it takes mine longer to wake up from sleep than hibernate, so I usually just use hibernate when I have to.

 

I much preferr to use hibernate because it uses zero power. but my new laptop running vista takes longer to hibernate than to shut down.

aside from HD defrag - anyone know how to speed this process up?

My old laptop I would bring in and out of hibernate mode for months at a time and 7 years later it still runs fine.

 

I have an ACER Aspire 1360/1520 series laptop running XP PRO. When in either hibernate or sleep mode, I cannot now wake it up. The only option I seem to have is to hold down the power button and cause a reboot. It always used to work - but no longer does. Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

You may have bad memory. Try it with each of the two modules by themselves and see if it works then.

Greg

 

Does the same "bump" theory apply for sleep/standby?

 

I'm also wondering, does this theory apply to normal desktop computers?
Because recently I've been receiving this message after the computer restarts itself from a crash in bios "DISK BOOT FAILURE, insert system disk and press enter".

I've always shut down my computer at night and here and there I would force reset/power off. I've already replaced the HD before because of that message so I was wondering if this theory of wear and tear applies to my situation.

 

My supplier at work tells us that his customers that run their desktop computers 24/7 require fewer repairs than this customers that turn their machines on and off every day. Our company runs our desktop computers 24/7 and we haven't had any big problems due to that. However the little cooling fans would sometimes fail. This wasn't such a big deal 5 years ago, but modern high performance CPU's require good cooling or they will self destruct, so a failed cooling fan could be disastrous.

I doubt if notebook computers are made to run 24/7, if for no other reason than their little cooling fans not being heavy duty.

 

Im more of a "If not in use, shut it off" kind of person. I don't leave my computer standby alot (2-5 Minutes tops) And it wastes voltage, i try to save as much as i can

 

One thing that I have not sen mentioned is the fact that your fans are sucking dirt into the computer while your asleep all night, or leave it on for extended periods of time while not using it. I may be wrong, but I believe the fan, or fans will kick in if it reaches a temp where it needs to cool down a tad.

I personally can't stand hibernate. My puter will boot up faster from off than it will from coming out of hibernate.

To the guy who stated something about 32 second start up not being possible? I can go from hitting the power switch, to being connected wireless in 47 seconds. And yes, that's running XP, thru my Panasonic CF-30 ToughBook.

 

I shutdown my laptop every day when I go to bed. Occasionally I hibernate, if I really feel like saving something. I standby during the day when I need to go somewhere for an hour or two (dinner).
I can probably count, on my two hands, the number of times I have left my computer on all night - it doesn't feel right wasting power.

 

i think sleep and hibernate cause issues withthe system allocating space and if something goes bad it looses that space thus causing a hole in what the system is storing

 

Sleep/Hibernate > shutdown for me.

i love the way i can leave running games and resume from the exact position

 

I shutdown because some people can get access to you computer illegally and send out bad things such as P... to tons of other computers.

 

sleep/hibernate has password feature.

 

I put my alienware laptop to sleep over night, it takes 3 minutes or so to boot cold, but resumes from sleep in less then ten seconds.
It's partially because for a while it would not get past POST if it hadn't been turned off in a cool room for more then eight hours. If it's sleeping, it can resume without going through POST.

Now that i discovered it's the optical drive controller, i can turn it off, but don't generally. I turn it off once a week so as to clear out any nonsense XP has left in memory and give it a chance to rethink things. XP doesn't really need this generally, but it's left over from the windows 95/98 days where the longer the system had been up the less stable it is. I've been doing computers for too long


The mini-9 sleeps when the lid is closed, then hibernates after an hour of sleeping if it's on AC, or half an hour on batteries.



I used to leave my desktop (back when i had a desktop) on 24/7, but if i did that with my alienware i'd have to clean it constantly. I now live right next to a cement factory and the dust is really something, and there is a LOT of it.
As it is i have to clean the intake grills every two weeks, and the heatsinks every month or two.
If i left it on all the time it'd be every week and every 2-4 weeks.

 

When i'm on my laptop and have to go out quickly or to the next class i put it to sleep. If i'm going to sleep i put it on hibernate and i'm traveling i shut it down and once a week or twice a week i shut it down..

 

I haven't shut down my computer in ages, I always put it to sleep.

 

why are you sad ???

i always shut down....but now i am reconsidering lol
but i cant understand how some ppl can leave their pcs running for months
this doesn't affect the performance ????

 

I like shutting down coz next time when I restart it refreshes everything and my laptop works fast. Let say in some point my computer is running slow and I do hibernate then next time when I turn it on, it will be the same.

 

Shutdown>Sleep>Hibernate for me atleast.

 

Yeah, I sometimes have problems with the WiFi working after sleep or hibernation, so I try to shut it down unless I just have a ton of things open and don't feel like saving everything. But I agree it helps to shut down as far as speed goes.

 

Well...assuming that you are on Vista, at least the wifi problem should be solved...with a stress on the word 'should'!

I have been hibernating the machine thus far...maybe I should just turn the thing off every night. During the day, I just keep it on...

 

hey i usually do the same and everything just works fine. but last night was an exception first that i hibernated my lenovo notebook for more than overnight means almost 24 hrs.. and then it just didnt wake up..
dont know what happened i press the power switch and just nothing happens for 1 minute the button glows and that first screen of lenovo also doesnot comes up and it dies.. i use ubuntu 8.04 and at present i am helpless people are suggesting all sort of stuff that u shud not hibernate your system, it kills the laptop... i am left with no direction if some software or boot comes up i may be able to do something... ur writing was a boost up thanks buddy..
please suggest me some way out........ any and every help is appreciated

 

For me sleep>shutdown>hibernate.

 

For those folks with faulty Nvidia GPUs affected by bad solder bumps wherein the constant cooling & heating creates cracks and expands them, keeping the laptop running prolongs GPU life.