sleep v hibernate v suspend v ...

what is the basic difference here? if i'm trying to hang onto work i'm doing yet save power while on the road, what is the best state to use?

i used to flat-out shut off the PC, but that required saving all open windows first so i can open them locally. this worked great in 95/98, but since XP and win7, HTML and MHTML saves are flaky at best. if i'm trying to save 15 open windows/tabs, 6 or 7 will typically be corrupted (blank) when reopened.

then i tried sleep and hibernate, but i'm not sure what those represent exactly. if i just unplug the PC and walk away with it, the screen goes blank and fans get quiet, but which state is it in, actually? either way it seems safer than hand-selecting sleep or hibernate, which often triggers a REBOOT when i try to wake it back up! unplug/reawaken rarely does, so all my windows are uncorrupted/ready to go when i open the PC back up. only thing is, if i'm on the road too long between times, the BATTERY will often run out before then.

then again, dead battery doesn't even seem to be a factor. when i am back at a power source for the "second" of these two sessions, plugging in the PC and opening the lid will usually bring me right back to all those open windows, even if the battery had fully discharged in the meantime. i say "usually", b/c today, for example, i was faced with a fresh boot when i did just that...thereby LOSING everything i had specifically lined up.

i also tried powering down by directly PUSHING the power button (as opposed to point-and-click "shut down" from paragraph 2 up there), thinking that might trigger some sort of "softer" sleep/hiberate, but it did just the reverse -- immediate "shut down" a la paragraph 2; all info lost. :cry

clarification, pls! how to best preserve the entire state of PC (info in browsers) while milking battery power as long as possible? and is it possible to reliably preserve said state PAST a battery discharge (i'm succeeding MOST of the time, but not all...).

thanks

 

Laptops are usually set to automatically go into Suspend/Sleep after a period of time, and then eventually Hibernate.

Suspend/Sleep is where the computer's status is saved in RAM. It requires a small amount of power, but much less than if the computer is fully "on". Also, resuming from this mode is very fast.

Hibernate is where the computer's status is saved to the hard drive, and then the computer is completely powered down. When powered back up, it will restore the computer to the way it was before it was put into Hibernate.

A computer should never be forced to shut off (i.e. holding down the power button). It can corrupt system files and leave you having to reinstall/repair/etc. Windows.

Suspend/Sleep is best preservation-wise, but does use some battery. I think an option you could look into is getting a power inverter rated for your laptop that plugs into the "cigarette lighter" socket of your vehicle and has a power outlet at the other end for your laptop's power cord. If you look at your power cord's "brick", it should have the volts and amps OUTPUT. Multiply these to get the watts, as inverters are rated solely on wattage. For instance, if it's 16V and 2A, it's 32W, so a 100W inverter would be completely sufficient.

 

is hibernate RELIABLE?

my choices are "shut down >> sleep" and "shut down >> hibernate". i'm not really concerned with speed of reboot; i'm concerned with how long battery can last and whether windows will really boot back up to where i was without risking a fresh boot.

i have connection probs at home lately, so a a lot of what I do is speed-surf at work, spreading out results in dozens and dozens of windows to peruse slowly at home. problem is, if i get called to some errand for 4-5 hours BEFORE that.

alternate scenario is when i'm headed to some wifi place lacking power. fine and dandy if coming from home/work, but if it's on the heels of those 4 or 5 hour errands, i need to start with the PC off or it's dead when i get there. if for some reason i need windows pre-opened similar to the above paragraph, "hibernate" is my best option, right?

 

I typically, turn off all hibernate and sleep on my computers. I don't trust them. I press power off, that computer better power off.

 

Well, I can't promise that hibernate will keep all of what you had loaded from online available... I'd say you should test that theory to make sure it's the option that would work for you. But hibernate doesn't use ANY battery power, so in that respect, would definitely last the longest.

Great... how is that helpful at all to the OP's question? It's not.

 

Like mcsmc said:

Manual power off via button or plug pulling or whatever is a last resort when nothing else will work. Do it often enough on any machine and trouble will follow. Shutting down this way is not best, or even almost best, practice.

You can lose data not saved by doing a manual shutdown, but of more concern is the chance that terminating this way can damage the file system when running processes are interrupted. Scandisk may auto run on reboot, it may not. Also, it will sometimes be unable to recover your OS to a usable state.

For similar reasons all NTFS formatted removable disks should be software ejected/unmounted before removing them. Not doing so means data loss at some point...

 

before getting back to the main issue, let me just ask whether that last point also applies to RUNNING the battery OUT?

if pulling the plug/killing the power is so dangerous, how is that different from me puttering along and suddenly seeing "battery dead - adios, sucker!" ??

i do this almost daily. i mean, this thread is largely about preserving my info THROUGH such a shutdown. but if the shutdown ITSELF is a danger...?

 

Batteries typically do not die instantly, unless you have a bad battery. Otherwise, there is no difference.


However, most laptops are setup to hibernate or shut down via software when the battery gets too low.

Sleep is reliable, unless you lose power.
Hibernate is reliable, as long as you don't have hard disk issues, or change hardware and then try to boot again.

Hybrid sleep is the best of both worlds. It saves to ram and disk. So if you do not lose power, you start back up quickly. If you do, you can still resume from hibernate.

I've been using sleep on my laptop for the last year and never had a problem. If I lose power, it powers off and resumes from disk.

As for your last question, why is shutdown a danger?

 

i was quoting mcsmc and cipher there, re: a "hard" shutdown.

if i'm not mistaken, my POWER SWITCH can also be set to trigger a "soft[ware]" shutdown. not that I've done that, mind you -- i can barely tell WHAT's going on now as is.

the fact that the same scenarios (running out battery) trigger DIFFERENT recoveries on different days still leaves me baffled. one day it's "resume windows?", the next day it's "start windows normally?".

 

If it is showing start windows normally, then it was likely to be losing power before it was able to hibernate.

In which case, I would adjust your power management plan.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2056318/powa.PNG