Sleep mode in VAIO: Safe?

I have Vista preinstalled in my SZ. I ran into a Vista help screen that encourages us to use SLEEP instead of SHUTDOWN ("Shutdown should be used if you don't plan to use your computer for a few days").

Question: Is sleep safe? What about Hibernate?

I carry my computer in a backpack or a messenger bag and walk around a lot. If the computer is in sleep mode, would this damage the hard drive?

I read once that the hard drive should be completely shut down.

Maybe I'm missing something---so far, I've been shutting down the machine.

 

Sleep is a hybrid between stand-by and hibernate (closer to stand-by though). I don't know the specifics though, but in stand-by the ram is kept powered, where as in hibernate, whats in the ram is written to hard drive (and then powered off).
I don't have Vista yet but I exclusively use hibernate, as it uses no power at all and only takes 20-30secs to resume to its original state.
Either way, the hard disk is off in all modes so from that perspective its fine.

 

Yeah, I've heard that there's slight battery leakage on sleep mode (that's ok). Good to know about the hard drive being off...I suppose that most hard drives automatically go into "parked" mode nowadays, even in sleep mode then?

 

I'm pretty sure that in stand by mode, only the ram is kept powered on. I don't know anything about Vista's sleep mode other than its a hybrid between standby and hibernate. Either way you're hard disk will be safe whilst being carried around.