Guest
[Entry]
"Well, to understand why sleep is preferred instead of hibernation, it's important to know what each of them is (source):
Sleep is commonly known as Standby in
Windows system or S3 in ACPI. In Sleep
mode, the power supply to
non-essential and non-critical
component is withheld, and most system
operation is shutdown and stopped. All
data in physical memory (RAM module)
is still kept in internal memory, and
whole system is placed in stand-by
mode, which can be woke up and used
almost immediately. In Sleep mode, the
power load reduce considerably, saving
a lot of energy. However, the power
must not be cut off, and must be
continue to supply to the computer.
Once out of power, the system will
have to start again just like a newly
boot computer just started from power
off state.
...
Hibernate, or S4 in ACPI, meanwhile
will save the data in physical memory
to hard disk drive (HDD), and then
power off the computer. In Hibernate
mode, a file named hiberfil.sys which
has the same file size as the amount
of system memory will be created on
the local disk. When user wants to use
the computer again, the computer will
boot up and load back the state at the
last hibernation. The advantage of
Hibernation mode is that no power is
wasted for maximum saving of power. In
Hibernation dormancy, no electricity
is consumed by system. Beside, restore
from Hibernate is generally faster
than computer reboot, and is totally
different from fresh start, as users
can return to the exact state of last
hibernation with all programs running
and documents opened intact, instead
of empty desktop. The disadvantage of
Hibernate is that after a period of
time, there may have fragmentation of
file. Users will need to defragment
the volume that stores the hibernation
file frequently.
Hibernation is slower than sleep because the whole contents of the RAM must be saved on disk when entering this state. Having a 4 GB file on your C: partition is not exactly the best thing, at times. That file must then be loaded back into RAM when exiting hibernation. Sleep is faster, nothing to save, nothing to load (mostly).
Reliability should be no concern for either sleep, or hibernation."
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