Hibernation vs. Standby

  • Thread starter Thread starter OREALLY
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OREALLY

Regarding hibernation: I seem to have exhausted all explanations and
solutions. Hibernation is a dicey operation, at best. Microsoft even put out
an update to try and correct it. I can't understand why they insist it is a
viable option given its problems on desktops. Meanwhile, Standby seems to
work, so far. My question is: What is the effect on hard drive life....
using either standby or hibernation?

Oreally
 
OREALLY said:
Regarding hibernation: I seem to have exhausted all explanations and
solutions. Hibernation is a dicey operation, at best. Microsoft
even put out an update to try and correct it. I can't understand
why they insist it is a viable option given its problems on
desktops. Meanwhile, Standby seems to work, so far. My question is:
What is the effect on hard drive life.... using either standby or
hibernation?
Click to expand...

Likely net-zero.

What I mean is your hard drive should not be harmed by normal operations
(read/write/seek/head-park/etc) - standby/hibernation is nothing abnormal to
a hard disk drive. The life of the hard drive - unless it is flawed - is
practically unchanged.

If you have a good hard drive with minimal flaws and don't use it for
drop-testing - you will lose interest in it before it loses interest in your
data.

(That is not to say that you should not backup. Not doing that simple task
is unwise at best.)
 
Hibernation and Standby were created for laptops, which are frequently
operated on battery power. Desktops use different hardware (and
different BIOSes) so you should not necessarily expect Hibernation and
Standby to work flawlessly all the time on a desktop.

Which is not to say that H & S won't work on a desktop...it's more like,
if it works, great, and if it doesn't, oh well.
 
Hibernation and Standby were created for laptops, which are frequently
operated on battery power. Desktops use different hardware (and
different BIOSes) so you should not necessarily expect Hibernation and
Standby to work flawlessly all the time on a desktop.

Which is not to say that H & S won't work on a desktop...it's more
like, if it works, great, and if it doesn't, oh well.
Click to expand...

They've always worked well on both my lap and desk top machines. I let
them go into Standby if I've left for a short amount of time. If that
short time turns into a long time, then it hibernates.

There is some sort of a "use it or lose it" thing I've never quite
figured out, but - since I started using them consistantly on both
machines, the problems are gone. But it's true of either laptop OR
desktop, so it's something common to the OS internals, whatever it is.
No idea whether SP3 made any difference but nothing else changed about
it in any way.

Twayne
 
Hi Oreally,

there is no real effect on hard drive life. You could save some electricity
usage by using hibernation though.

But, since hibernation is storing the data into the hard drive, you could
expect more fragmentation on your hard drive.
 
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