SSDs and Sleep

philosofool

Senior member
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.
 

marlinman

Member
Dec 10, 2006
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May not be relevant, but I discovered yesterday that if your BIOS setup prog has a "Check Ready Bit" setting, then this should be disabled if an SSD is present to prevent problems waking.
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
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You are correct that the extra writes to the SSD caused by hibernation don't really matter. However, I don't really understand why you would want to hibernate a desktop that's always plugged in. The power draw in S3 sleep is really quite minimal.
 

KingGheedora

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2006
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I just tested an HTPC machine I'm working on -- S3 sleep vs hibernate. There was a huge difference. Hibernate: 0.3W, Sleep: >65W.

This was surprising to me and I think something isn't configured right. Could also be that the kill-a-watt reading is off--they are known to inaccurate.
 

Paperlantern

Platinum Member
Apr 26, 2003
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If a machine is pulling 65 watts, it seems to me it is ON, the monitor is just asleep, basically cutting video output. .3W is like, a few blinking LEDs. I doubt the reading is off. I have an entire server closet running on a UPS that measures 250 Watt draw. Two servers, a modem, a firewall appliance, an external Firewire WD MyBook, and a WAP, all pulls 250 Watts. A small HTPC should pull between 50 and 100 watts. Measure it when it is ON, without the monitor (or TV), it probably won't be far off of your "sleep" measurment.
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
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I just tested an HTPC machine I'm working on -- S3 sleep vs hibernate. There was a huge difference. Hibernate: 0.3W, Sleep: >65W.

This was surprising to me and I think something isn't configured right. Could also be that the kill-a-watt reading is off--they are known to inaccurate.

Are you sure that you're going into S3 and not S1 (Power on Standby?). If the fans are still spinning, you're going into S1. If they're not spinning, your meter is probably bad, because you're not going to be able to effectively dissipate 65W inside a case with no airflow.