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Is it safe to use hibernate all the time?

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Hibernate works great on my Asus eee 1000h. I rarely power down. Well, once every week or 2 I do just to clean things up. I may not need to but it seems like it might just free up resources.

My Toshiba Satellite A100 doesn't handle hibernation. It hibernates when I shut the lid but when it wakes up it goes right back to sleep like the groundhog when it sees its shadow. If anyone knows a fix for this I would appreciate it.

Posted by: Mark Jacobs at May 8, 2009 10:23 AM

Would these issues in hibernate also be a concern for Standby mode in XP and Sleep in Vista?

Standby does not write RAM to, or reload it from memory. Standby uses a small amount of power to keep RAM loaded. With that in mind, Standby will eventually either hibernate or shut down as the battery drains.

That said, in concept the rest of the issues remain the same, except that it's been my experience that Standby is more problematic with driver and other issues than Hibernate. If it works, great.
- Leo
08-May-2009

Posted by: Danny at May 9, 2009 8:23 AM

Yes I use hibernate most of the time, (reboot maybe once a week.. not sure if it's my imagination but I think it might get slower and as the other poster said above to 'clean things up') .. however I did want to mention that yes, right about the drivers because one time I came out of either hibernation or standby, can't remember, and my mouse - when I moved back and forth the pointer went up and down, and when I moved my mouse up and down, my pointer went back and forth! woah! I restarted the computer and all was fine.. but THAT was weird!

Posted by: Tracy at May 12, 2009 10:46 AM

I've noticed that the date in the calendar of Microsoft Works doesn't keep the correct date if you hibernate overnight. Very minor indeed.

Posted by: duane at May 12, 2009 11:04 AM

Both my one-year-old laptop and my brand-new desktop will choose to come out of hibernation at their own whim. I suspect it happens when one of the apps I leave open tries to poll the Internet connection periodically; does that make sense? So, I've made a point of closing both my email client and my browser before I hibernate, and so far, so good.

Posted by: SunHiker at May 12, 2009 3:55 PM

Good article Leo. I'm a long time reader, first time commenter; your site is great!

I was sleeping my desktop for a long time, shutting down over the weekends and sleeping it mainly through the week. Then one day I came back from sleep mode and nothing on my desktop worked! The icons where all there but everything I clicked on just came up with an error message. I had to revert to a restore point to fix it, but now I'm too scared to use sleep mode anymore. It's still tempting because I loved leaving things open and coming back to exactly where I was, but the trust is gone now. :(

Posted by: Lee at May 12, 2009 6:36 PM

Another problem with hibernate is that over time, garbage data gets stored in system memory due to certain faults in computer programs(memory leaks etc). Over a period of time this causes the system to slow down.
So as long as a system is restarted once in a while , its good to hibernate.

Posted by: newprouser at May 13, 2009 10:00 PM

A point about updating the BIOS. My netbook's battery(well looked after) is cutting out when 20% power remaining and should go into hibernation but doesn't - needs a reboot. Tech support suggests a Bios update to fix this but warns this could damage the BIOS resulting in a useless compter and the company will take no resposibilty.
As I don't want to risk this I'm not updating - I'll just live with this glitch.

Posted by: Dennis at May 14, 2009 3:06 AM

I just have been a new member of yours.but i assure you i'll always there.I very much liked your solutions.It is helpiing me a lot.thanks for always being there

Posted by: shahnawaz at May 15, 2009 9:43 PM

Ihave XP on one computer and Vista on another. I use hibernate on XP and sleep on Vista. What is the difference? Is sleep the same as standby, and if so how do I hibernate on Vista?

Posted by: Bill MacMillan at May 19, 2009 6:28 PM
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