On adapter, better to hibernate or standby throughout the night?

If I'm using an adapter to power my Vaio, what would be more reasonable to do when I'm not using my Vaio throughout the night:

1. Hibernate
2. Sleep
3. Shutdown


Keep in mind that I'm using an adapter, not the battery.

 

I just hibernate each night and reboot at least once a week.

 

close lid, goes into standby, open lid, press any key, up and running in 2 seconds.

coming out of hibernation takes too long to be functional again

 

Does hibernating every other day or so have any effect on your computer's performance in the long run? Does it effect any hardware?

Same thing with sleep/standby. Going into sleep/standby every night, will it effect the notebook's performance in the long run?

I have a compaq desktop since 5 year ago and every night, I shut it down. Every night. Till this day, my desktop has been running just how I like it to run. I've never put that desktop into hibernate and rarely put it on standby for the night. Always shut it down.

So I'm wondering would it be best if I apply this same habit to my notebook while on an adapter.

Your inputs would be greatly appreciated.

 

I guess now would be a good time as any to look at the power modes in Windows:

Standby/Sleep (XP/Vista) - Puts your PC and cpomponents into a very low power mode but does not save the state of your hard drive if the power goes off your you run out of juice. Not a good idea when you're on batteries. On AC power it makes more sense, although you're still not protected if say there's a power outage and your battery still dies, so there's still a small risk that you can lose your work.

For Vista, Sleep is a little different, and a little smarter. The big difference in Vista is that when the battery level gets low, Vista automatically puts your PC into Hibernate mode, thus guaranteeing you'll never lose any of your work. It works so well that in Vista, you don't even have the option to hibernate, the only option it offers (and the only one you'll need) is Sleep.

Hibernate (XP/Vista) - Saves your current work and state on hard disk and shuts down completely -- the pro is that you're completely protected from power failure as your work is saved in non-volatile memory (HDD). The con is that Hibernate eats up hard disk space and the time it takes to put a PC into Hibernate and wake from Hibernate can be lengthy (which also suggests that you're putting a potential load of HDD activity and fragmentation on your HDD).

Shutdown - self explanatory. I guess the pros would be that your work is guaranteed to be saved (provided you address your dialogue windows) and you're not using any power at all. The con would be the stress you're putting on your hardware during the startup/shutdown process (which even that is up to argument).

If given the option, the choice is easy for Vista -- just set the NB to sleep. Low power mode, no risk of losing your work, even during a power outage. For XP Standby is kind of a low-risk proposition on AC power -- you never know what happens while you're sleeping. The pros with Standby is that it would stress out your components the least out of the three options. Hibernate-- takes a long time to come in and out of hibernation, and it eats up disk space. Also, just thinking about Hibernation works, I think it would degrade the performance of your HDD by the constant read/writes of large amounts of data if you hibernate everyday, but again nothing has been proven for sure.

My choice for an XP NB would be either shut it down every night or standby. I don't think there's any definitive proof that turning off/on your components on a daily basis would stress them out to a point where the life of your NB would suffer, nor is standby that risky of a proposition if you're power is clean and you're a responsible person and you save your work on a regular basis. Standby would also stress out your NB the least.

 

I hibernate mostly. If something has changed (USB device removed, slow performance, etc.) I'll hit F8 and do a startup instead.

 

I Sleep all the time. It takes less than 5 seconds to run again after Sleep. I am also using the adapter and not the battery. Waiting for the system to reboot is hassle. I haven't tried hibernating so i don't know the difference.

 

Another vote for hibernate, never had a problem, the start up allows me to get a cup of coffee going

 

If it's overnight I just turn off. I wouldn't want something happen overnite such as a power failure and power surge while I'm asleep. Hope you have a surge protector.

 

This is about the same thing I do, works well and hibernate doesnt take much time to boot up. Plus you get the added bonus of taking the laptop off power and not having to worry about killing your battery while you have it in your bag.

 

Hibernate for sure if it's all night for me. Not shutdown though cause Vista takes ages to start-up again.

 

I Hibernate because I don't want to have the NB constantly drawing power from the battery. I can wait for my computer to boot up, I never need it to be working immediately. Although I must say that some people experience strange issues with their computers after bringing them out of standby or hibernate.

 

Hibernate. I like the computer to be off, with no likelihood of waking up. In the past I have had problems with resuming from standby which didn't happen with hibernation. I think those bugs may have been fixed now, but I am still distrustful of standby.

OK. It may take half a minute or so to wake up, but that is much faster than a cold start.

John

 

Yeah hibernation does take faster then off a cold start....for some of yall...

My Vaio takes less then 30 seconds to load up off a shutdown. So I don't have an issue with how long the NB takes to start up. Just want to know which options would least reduce notebook/hardware etc. performance.

 

DEFINITELY DO NOT HIBERNATE!!!!!!!

It takes up loads of hard drive space. I always put it on stand by and sometimes shut down - my computer doesn't like it if it's left on all the time with all the mods I've made to it.

 

I hibernate daily and reboot once in awhile. I find that resuming from hibernate is way quicker than cold boot.

I don't like standby because sometimes due to mouse movement or whatnot the unit comes out of standby and the bottom gets really warm if left on for long periods of time.

 

And in exchange for the hard drive space, you can leave your computer unplugged in a bag and it doesn't use power, and it starts up quicker than after a full shut-down, especially when you have a lot of things installed like I do. Seriously... learn to manage your hard drive space. I have 2GB of RAM in both of my laptops, which means that I have to have 2GB of space for the hibernation, and I never run into a problem, even with multiple game disc images and development project source trees and such on the machines.

 

Yeah try hibernation for all the above points made

Though I suspect as XP is not quite perfect it could have been one of a possible number of factors contributing to my laptop thinking the usb ports were 1.1 as opposed to 2.0

I don't hibernate anymore, but I do standby but as above, that's not recommended for overnight. I shut down due to my paranoia and not knowing what messed my laptop up and not willing to reformat again. I can live with the 47 seconds boot time

 

Standbye if I'm gonna use it within a few mins off the mains.
Hibernate at night / travelling.
Restart every now and then.

Vista takes too long to boot up from scratch.

 

i always shut it down for the night. Unless i have some unfinished work, or else i try not to put it in hibernation

 

How does hibernating consume HD space? Does it have to do with the system restore points?

 

^Hibernation is basically the computer taking a snapshot of what your currently doing on the computer and storing that "snapshot" on the hard drive so when you boot up again, you'll resume where you left off. Thus, this "snapshot" will consume hdd space.

 

Will these temporary space used up be released after it's been booted up from Hibernation or every now and then by itself or a manual way? Or will it just keep on increasing and taking up all the space?

 

^Now think it about it. If it keeps on increasing the hdd space everytime you hibernate, you would eventually run out of hdd space. So then hibernation would be a poor choice to choose, then why even have that option?

 

Well I "assume" that it will clear it sometime or just replace once it recovers from Hibernation. Can't be sure though.

 

If you have enabled hibernation then look in C:\ and you should see (if you have unhidden the system files) a file called hiberfil.sys. The size of this file is the same as the size of your RAM.

This file is static and will only change if you change the amount of RAM. I believe that while the file size is fixed, Windows only writes the contents of RAM currently in use so hibernation and resume times vary according to how many applications you have open.

John