#Hybrid sleep vs hibernate how to
#Hybrid sleep vs hibernate full

However, if there was a power cut while the computer was sleeping, it would boot up as if resuming from hibernation. When you resume, it’s just like resuming from sleep mode. What happens here is that the computer goes into a normal sleep mode, but it also saves a copy of your RAM to the hard drive. The Hybrid Sleep OptionĪ third option that may be available to you is known as hybrid sleep. It also means that going into hibernation takes longer than going to sleep, but from a user perspective that doesn’t make a lot of difference. So though resuming from hibernation might not be as quick as resuming from sleep, the gap between the two has narrowed significantly. In addition, if your computer has an SSD as a main drive, especially an NVME model, the RAM image can be copied in a flash. The thing is, modern computers boot from cold very quickly. The computer has to boot from a cold state and then copy the contents of RAM back from your hard drive. So, what’s the catch? Resuming from hibernation is slower than sleep mode. A power cut also doesn’t really matter in this case. It can be unplugged and transported with no worries at all. With the contents of RAM completely saved to the hard drive, your computer can power off completely. This is non-volatile memory and so keeps your data even when the power is off. The big difference here is that the contents of your memory are stored on your hard drive. Hibernation also lets you power on your computer and pick up from where you left off. Hibernation: Going Cold For The Long Haul Move the mouse or open the laptop lid and you’re ready to go. The big convenience with sleep mode is that your computer is ready to work almost instantly. That does add up over days, weeks and months however. To be sure, it uses less power than an active computer. The second big caveat with sleep mode is that it still uses power. However, you may want to consider using a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) to keep your sleeping computer safe just in case. Since the on-board batteries will keep supplying power to the sleeping computer in the event of power loss.

Just be aware of the higher power consumption, similar to the regular Sleep mode.Laptop computers obviously don’t have this problem at all. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t want to use Hybrid Sleep on a laptop. Plus, the laptop battery can deal with power outages and there’s no risk of losing the current system state. On laptops, hybrid mode is disabled by default, as it consumes more power than hibernation.

#Hybrid sleep vs hibernate how to

How to Enable Hybrid Sleep in a Windows Power Plan?įirst, if you’re using a desktop and you haven’t changed the Hybrid Sleep settings before then most likely this standby mode is already enabled on your PC. You could say that Hybrid Sleep takes the worse parts of Sleep and Hibernation, and you would be almost correct if it wasn’t for the ability to resume work in case of a power failure, something only hibernation can do. Also, power consumption in Hybrid Sleep is just as high as in Sleep compared to hibernation.

You’ll still need enough space on the main partition for the hibernation file. Putting a computer into Hybrid Sleep will take just as long as Hibernation, but will resume faster when turned on again.

#Hybrid sleep vs hibernate full

When Hybrid Sleep is turned off the system will resume full power, the monitor will turn on, then hibernation begins writing the RAM contents to the disk, and turning the system off at the end.When Hybrid Sleep is active the system will just turn off, as the data is already saved to the hibernation file.One interesting difference is what happens if you set your Windows power plan to Hibernate after a longer interval of Sleep. There’s no need to read the hibernation file. If you press a key or move the mouse the system will resume in a few seconds, exactly as it happens from normal Sleep, though not blazing fast as on a Mac.

Nothing is lost, but it will take a bit longer to resume. If a power outage occurs the system will resume and copy the hibernation file data to RAM, exactly as it happens when your resume from hibernation. The RAM keeps refreshing to keep the data intact, while the system looks for user input from the keyboard, mouse, or even the NIC card, depending on how you’ve configured your system. Only key components are powered in Hybrid Sleep, the same as during the Sleep mode. When a computer is put to hybrid sleep it writes the current memory contents to a file on the primary system disk, then puts the hardware in a very low power mode. Hybrid Sleep in Windows is a combination of the regular Sleep mode and Hibernation. 2 How to Enable Hybrid Sleep in a Windows Power Plan?.