Sleep vs. Hibernate: Increasing Computer Efficiency

August 4th, 2010

When you close your computer, whether for the day or just for a few minutes, you probably aren’t consciously considering which mode will use the least energy and serve you most effectively. Most of us simply fall into a pattern of clicking the same button every time, regardless of which is actually the most efficient choice. Understanding the difference in sleep and hibernate modes can help you decide which is the appropriate course of action each time you finish using your computer.A computer placed in sleep or standby mode is utilizing a type of power-saving method that will reduce the power used by your monitor and turn off the hard drive, but it stores whatever you were using or working on in random access memory (RAM). True to its name, when your computer is placed in this power-saving mode it can easily be restarted or woken up. However, your un-saved work is at risk because if the battery power dies or there is a power outage with a desktop computer, RAM fails and you can lose your work. For this reason, sleep should be used when you are only going to be away from your computer for a very short time period. If you use the sleep mode more than a few hours you can drain the battery, using unnecessary amounts of electricity.Putting your computer into hibernate mode will store your data onto the hard drive and your system is then basically shut down. Because your information is stored on the hard drive and not RAM, you don’t run the risk of losing any files if power fails. Bringing your computer out of hibernate is faster than restarting it completely, but slower than bringing it out of sleep. Therefore, this power-saving method should be used when you don’t plan on using your computer again for more than several hours.

Posted in Sustainable Computing | Comments Off

Comments are closed.