Is using sleep mode permanently safe?

[hackmole]

I bought a new laptop on Black Friday and have left it in sleep mode ever since. I just find it extremely convenient not to have to seek all the files I'm working as well as quickly pick up where I left on once I start as well as being ready to go in like 5 seconds.

I don't know if it is safe to keep computers permanently in sleep mode or not or if it will wear out the laptop or hard drive faster?

 

[Ken g6]

Well there's two kinds of sleep mode. "Standby" keeps your data in RAM at low power. It doesn't wear anything out faster than turning off the computer, except it drains a laptop's battery. "Hibernate" stores your data on your drive, which can wear out an SSD faster. There's also hybrid mode which does standby for awhile then hibernates if you don't turn the computer on for awhile.

 

[UsandThem]

I leave my computer in sleep mode (not hibernate), and really only restart it after Windows Updates or roughly once every 30-45 days otherwise.

I've done it this way since probably around 2005, and I haven't had any issues.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I use STR(suspend to ram), aka sleep mode. Sleep mode offers the ability to pause and resume quickly, making it ideal for mobility. It also does not write out a hibernation file to you disk. In our new SSD world, this helps reduce extra writes to the drive. STR keeps the power to the RAM, so it will slowly drain the battery. My lenovo T430 makes it about 4 days before it needs a recharge. It's worth noting that I beat the lappy to death on a regular basis.

Hibernate, STD (suspend to disk) is useful too, as it pauses and writes out a hibernate file to the hard disk/SSD. Benefit is that there is no power usage during hibernate. This does increase writes to a ssd, and coming out of hibernate takes a bit more time, especially if you're using whole disk encryption

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I use STR(suspend to ram), aka sleep mode. Sleep mode offers the ability to pause and resume quickly, making it ideal for mobility. It also does not write out a hibernation file to you disk. In our new SSD world, this helps reduce extra writes to the drive. STR keeps the power to the RAM, so it will slowly drain the battery. My lenovo T430 makes it about 4 days before it needs a recharge. It's worth noting that I beat the lappy to death on a regular basis.

Hibernate, STD (suspend to disk) is useful too, as it pauses and writes out a hibernate file to the hard disk/SSD. Benefit is that there is no power usage during hibernate. This does increase writes to a ssd, and coming out of hibernate takes a bit more time, especially if you're using whole disk encryption

With a laptop, you have a different situation with the power-brick. With a desktop, you degrade the PSU slowly over time with extended periods of sleep-state. If you hibernate, you will -- if configured so -- need to write 50% of RAM-size in a HIBERFIL.SYS.

I worried about how this affects my SSD TBW's. It does, but it's not significant because those suckers . . . will last for years . . . . anyway.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

if i will need my notebook in less than a few hours, i sleep it. more than that, hibernate to ssd.

ssds are made to be used, not saved till they are obsolete.

my intel x25 80 gig in my one of my notebooks has hibernated most every night for 7 years. has 80% life left.

 

[VirtualLarry]

ssds are made to be used, not saved till they are obsolete.

I really wish more people that owned SSDs realized that. The odds of exhausting the NAND of a consumer SSD, of adequate size (so that there is 25% free or more), with a consumer workload, is pretty slim. Most people will be upgrading to the "next big thing in storage" 10 years from now, and their SSDs will be still perfectly good, with 50% life or more left. (Edit: Servers, like database or VM, where there's a lot of constant random writes, are a different story. But then, there's "enterprise" SSDs, with things like HET eMLC (high endurance technology), that can withstand something like 20,000-50,000 P/E cycles. We're talking over a PB of Host Writes.)

my intel x25 80 gig in my one of my notebooks has hibernated most every night for 7 years. has 80% life left.

I bought some X25-M G2 and 320 Series (G3) SSDs, one had like 6.5TB host writes, still has 98% life left. Pretty amazing devices, really.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I skip hibernate on an SSD because boot times are ridiculously fast now.

Sleep mode I still have use for. It's quick and effective for mobility.

The laptop I use for this is work provided and requires PGP encryption, for whatever reason coming out of hibernate is slower than a cold boot

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

I bought some X25-M G2 and 320 Series (G3) SSDs, one had like 6.5TB host writes, still has 98% life left. Pretty amazing devices, really.

yeah mine is the g2. that thing is a tank. im thinking of putting it in my freenas box as a write cache to use it up before its too small for anything else.

no build of mine in the last 4 or 5 years has not had a ssd as boot, and sometimes another one for data (steam games and crypto coin blockchains usually).

256 gb ssds are fine for OS. use spinners in RAID 1 for other data.

and of course it all gets backed up to freenas nightly.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've had co-workers report weird behavior when they did not reboot for weeks on end.

I use desktops and disable hibernate. A booted Windows is a minty-fresh Windows.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've had co-workers report weird behavior when they did not reboot for weeks on end.

I use desktops and disable hibernate. A booted Windows is a minty-fresh Windows.

Couple things -- specifically responding to your post, and the general discussion with other posters.

For desktops, it is a much better idea to let them sleep for some limited time period -- a few hours -- with the power configuration set to hibernate after expiration of that time. Leaving the desktops to sleep for long periods -- I did it for one machine for days or weeks at a time -- will stress the unventilated PSU which continues to power the RAM.

So you could imagine a lot of weird behaviors for a machine asleep and not rebooted for weeks on end.

IF the hibernation occurs with good error-free hardware, you can raise the hiberfil.sys over and over through several sessions with no problem. It also makes it easier to schedule wakeups or wake-up initiated by another computer.

As for the TBWs occurring from hibernation, I was thinking that daily writes of between 8 and 16GB would pile up faster than I'd think, but writes to the hiberfil.sys may not involve the full size of the file. I limit my hiberfil.sys to 50% of RAM.

Looking at TBWs for all my SSDs new and old, they're all still relatively in their pre-school years of longevity.

Reformatting an SSD is the biggest hit a consumer-enthusiast workstation will take. There's plenty of ammo in the bandolier for even quite a few of those reformats, too.