- Nov 3, 2008
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I just installed my new SSD, an Intel 510 120GB. (It's great, so far.)
I wanted to confirm my understanding of SSDs and sleep. It's not practical for me never to let my computer sleep, since I frequently must leave my computer during the day and can't waste time shutting down and restarting all my computers to avoid wastefulness (i.e., letting my system use unnecessary electricity.) So, if you disagree with the following, let me know so I don't mess up my shiny new drive. Thanks.
S3 sleep is okay; it's doesn't write to a drive, so there's no worry about needless writes to the SSD.
Hibernate (S4 sleep) is a bad idea, because it does write to the main drive and that puts needless wear on the drive.
In Vista and Win 7, you need to turn off hybrid sleep to prevent needless writes as well. Instruction on doing this here: http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-7/turn-off-hybrid-sleep-in-windows-7/
Overall, worries about drive wear are overstated because (1) even home use isn't likely to wear the drive out in anything under 10 years and (2) by the time the drive wears out, if ever, SSDs are going to cost 25 cents a gig anyway.
I wanted to confirm my understanding of SSDs and sleep. It's not practical for me never to let my computer sleep, since I frequently must leave my computer during the day and can't waste time shutting down and restarting all my computers to avoid wastefulness (i.e., letting my system use unnecessary electricity.) So, if you disagree with the following, let me know so I don't mess up my shiny new drive. Thanks.
S3 sleep is okay; it's doesn't write to a drive, so there's no worry about needless writes to the SSD.
Hibernate (S4 sleep) is a bad idea, because it does write to the main drive and that puts needless wear on the drive.
In Vista and Win 7, you need to turn off hybrid sleep to prevent needless writes as well. Instruction on doing this here: http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-7/turn-off-hybrid-sleep-in-windows-7/
Overall, worries about drive wear are overstated because (1) even home use isn't likely to wear the drive out in anything under 10 years and (2) by the time the drive wears out, if ever, SSDs are going to cost 25 cents a gig anyway.