Vista sleep and hibernate, what is the difference

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oboyco

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I deleted about 7gb of hibernation files during disc cleanup. Now my UPS software is hounding me about hibernate not being active. I have hibernate set to never on my power plan.

So what exactly is hibernate, and do I really need it. My UPS software is set to turn my computer off after a set amount of time.
 
oboyco said:
I deleted about 7gb of hibernation files during disc cleanup. Now my UPS software is hounding me about hibernate not being active. I have hibernate set to never on my power plan.

So what exactly is hibernate, and do I really need it. My UPS software is set to turn my computer off after a set amount of time.
Click to expand...

Hibernation saves the contents of RAM to your hard disk, allowing you to resume use of your computer in the exact same state as it was in prior to hibernation. It requires no power to keep its state. When it works.

Sleep keeps a small amount of power to your PC to keep the contents of your RAM in RAM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernate_(OS_feature) has more info.

Do you really need it? it depends on what you do and how disastrous a random/sudden shutdown of your machine would be.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Hibernate stores the current status onto your hard drive and turns the computer off. You need to hit the power button again to restore it to where it was.

Sleep just powers some things down on your PC, move your mouse or hit a key and it's right back.
 
Oneos said:
Correct me if I'm wrong.

Hibernate stores the current status onto your hard drive and turns the computer off. You need to hit the power button again to restore it to where it was.

Sleep just powers some things down on your PC, move your mouse or hit a key and it's right back.
Click to expand...

Basically right - whether or not those actions wake your computer up from sleep is dependent on BIOS settings and other arcane nonsense; you might also have to hit the power button to resume from sleep if things are set up that way.
 
Found this from Vista help search.

What happened to standby and hibernate?
In earlier versions of Windows, standby saves your work to memory and puts your mobile PC into a power-saving state. Hibernate also puts your mobile PC into a power-saving state but saves your work to your hard disk so that you can safely turn off your mobile PC. This version of Windows combines standby and hibernate into a single power-saving state called sleep.

Note
Hibernate is still available as an advanced power setting. For more information, see Change power management settings

Reenabled hibernate through my UPS software as I couldn't find it in my power plan.
 
Yes, I was just going to add that. On a desktop, Vista's Hybrid Sleep is a combination of S3 Standby (suspend to RAM) while also creating a hibernation file so that, if power is lost, your system state is not. The advantage of Hybrid Sleep over Hibernate is that the system can normally be resumed within a few seconds, whereas reading back from a hibernation file takes much longer.
 
Mithent, thanks, wondered what hybrid sleep was, went ahead and enabled hybrid sleep.
 
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