Windows 7 sleep function

I'm wondering how the sleep function in Windows 7 fully works I think I understand but just would like to confirm for sure.

I disabled hibernation today on my laptop and plan to keep it that way as I like gaining the space back on my solid state and the fact hibernation gives me issues. So to my questions;

- Does only the RAM remain active in Sleep mode? (The hard disk doesn't spin right? I got a mechanical drive in my optical bay.)
- Is it safe to move a laptop around in sleep mode?
- Does the laptop continue to produce heat in sleep mode?

I want to use sleep at school well moving from class to class etc, and would be putting it in my bag so just wanna make sure I won't destroy it. : )

Thanks

 

I usually put my laptop on sleep while moving class to class for the whole year and nothing has gone wrong. I accidentally left it on while leaving school and noticed that my bag was getting super warm but luckily nothing went wrong and i just shut it off.

My laptop didn't produce any heat while on sleep mode. Even with my black backpack on hot days. Hottest it got here was around 28 Celsius it stayed cool in my bag

 

Sleep puts it in a low power state that only the ram is powered in order to store current state.

So it is pretty safe to move it around.

Some advice, it is good idea to disable any type of wake up triggers/timers that would cause it to wake up unexpectedly inside your backpack for example.

 

I would add if your machine does not wake from sleep properly in win 7 power plan it may help to change advanced settings - hard disk - turn off to never. ( when I used the default 10 minutes setting it would lock the machine ). Thanks to Tijo I can at least use sleep again.

 

So in the original settings after 10 minutes, the hard disk then is stopped in sleep mode? So the hard disk remains active for the first 10 minutes?

 

Exactly right, Mine came with a factory installed Seagate Hard drive. When I used it I never had an issue, Once I started using the SSD (Intel X-25) the issue started, I wasted a lot of time before getting that sorted out - softaware updates, Firmware updates, fresh win 7 install , etc.