Questions about XP's Hibernate and Standby

[imported_Neeraj]

I have 2 questions:

Standby

I think my BIOS's sleep state is set to the S3 power option which the manual says is a lower power sleep state than S1.

If I Standby the PC it will actually switch off everything. Moving the mouse or pressing a key doesn't wake it - and I like it that way! I have to press the power button to switch it on. It goes straight where I left it after switching on!

I thought Standby keeps data in RAM? But it seems as EVERYTHING is off: fans, lights, mouse, keyboard. Is the RAM still powered though, even if it seems not to be? I have that Corsair XMS RAM with the lights, and even those go off!

Hibernate

If I Hibernate, the PC obviously turns off after saving everything to disk from RAM. This is a nice feature. But say I decide I want it to hibernate every night and something goes wrong and crashes the PC. If I reboot, would I have lost anything from all those nights ago, since it hasn't been actually Shutdown for so long?

 

[JackMDS]

Hibernate has nothing to do with crashes or maintaining the OS or what ever you have on the hard drive, it doesn?t not touch the actual OS? settings.

If you shut down with Hibernate Mode On it save a ?picture? of the working RAM (Volatile RAM )to the Hard Drive. When you start again the Hard Drive loads back the info to the RAM so the computer is RAM wise the same as it was when you switched it off.

Standby on the other end does not switch the computer off.

:sun:

 

[imported_Neeraj]

In that case shouldn't people use Hibernate all the time? What are the exceptions or disadvantages compared to a shutdown?

 

[Brazen]

Older versions of Windows had a bad problem with leaving stuff in RAM that was not used anymore and leaving behind orphaned processes occupying valuable processor resources. The only way to clear the junk out is to shutdown and reboot. I think Windows XP is better with this, but still not perfect. I do however leave my computer on for days and probably weeks, if not a month or more with out turning it off and have not noticed any slowdown from this phenomena.

To answer your first post, I THINK that the S3 standby leaves only a trickle of power to keep your memory and processor registers alive, and completely shuts off all power to peripherals, which is why moving the mouse and hitting the keyboard has no effect. As your your RAM lights, the logic on the RAM probably knows it is going into a low power state and so shuts off the lights.

As for hibernation, as long as you save your work you will only lose stuff from the last time you saved, and any settings are saved when you hit the "OK" button, not when you shutdown your computer.

 

[JackMDS]

Getting out of Hibernation is longer than getting out of Standby since Hibernation has to go through the Hardware reboot.

The Hibernation info save the RAM with traces of the Time/Date at the saving.

When you start again the computer the clock is current but some of the RAM info might indicate the early time/date when it was shut off.

If you do not use for work special software or Network communication that is sensitive to timing, you can use Hibernation.

:sun:

 

[imported_Neeraj]

I should have used this a long time ago then Thanks for the replies