Hibernate instead of turning off

Atom · 29 Sep 2011 at 18:24

Basically, is there any side effects to using hibernate instead of turn off on a M4 SSD?

I like my rig to turn on and off as quick as possible sometimes when checking emails, etc and am thinking hibernate will be quicker than a power off/on.

mickyflinn · 29 Sep 2011 at 19:06

To maximize SSD life you want to minimize writes to it.

sleep/standby works by turning nearly everything off in your computer except keeping power flowing to the RAM thereby keeping you computer in state. sleep makes minimal writes to the drive.

hibernate (also called bybrid sleep) works similarily except instead of keeping RAM powered it copies everything in RAM to the drive so it can fully power down the copies that data back onto the RAM when resuming. this writes the entire contents of your RAM to the SSD everytime you hibernate. if you have 8G RAM then you're writing up to 8G to your SSD everytime.

Admetos · 29 Sep 2011 at 19:45

I'm not convinced what so ever about SSD wear issues, at least not to the point they should be a worry. I had a 3 year old Kingston SSD that had two Windows installs, then a total battering from page file, readyboost etc. No issues with the Kingston SSD other than slowdown.

I now have 2x Crucial M4 used for page file, readyboost, temp files etc. It's early days but I'm seeing no issues with the constant writes.

BTW. Hibernate compresses your memory, so if you have 8GB ram it's possible but very unlikely 8GB will be stored to your SSD. Windows 7 (as default) sets 75% of your total memory for the hibernate file. On Win 7 Hibernation is much more stable then Hibernation on XP, and other then Windows updates I use all the time, however I do boot from HDD.

Atom · 29 Sep 2011 at 19:55

I am not to worried about writes, looking at Crucials specs a 128gb M4 should be able to write 72TB before it dies and a 64gb 32TB.

I have 16GB of ram to put in my rig but it will be total overkill for me so not sure yet on 8/16gb.

olivier renault · 29 Sep 2011 at 20:33

It's wasting SSD space. 6GB for 8GB RAM, I found. I disabled hibernation. And virtual memory, but should be able to page on a HDD if you want.

C64 · 29 Sep 2011 at 20:35

s3 sleep is what you want check in bios a lot of bios you need to set to s3 first.

Admetos · 29 Sep 2011 at 22:16

olivier renault said:
It's wasting SSD space.

But he may want hibernation.

Hibernation is great if you work on PC and have lots of projects open, as everything is returned to exact state.