What's the Difference between Stand-by and Hibernate?

[darkthief]

I just got a new laptop for my b'day. I'm just wondering what's the difference between stand-by and hibernate for my laptop.

Say like i wanna save my Laptop Battery Life, which one do i choose?

[II Xion II]

If you are talking about Windows Stand By, then here it goes:

1.) Stand by - shuts the monitors and hard discs off and runs the CPU on low power (system is still running w/ session stored in memory)

2.) Hibernate - turns off the whole system and saves an image file to hard disc so that it can be "waked" when turned back on

Which one to choose is up to you. Stand by still runs the CPU and hence drains the battery (albeit not very much), while Hibernate will essentially turn it off and hence no battery power would be wasted. However, Hibernate takes longer to come out of upon "wakeup" and in order to use hibernate you need hard disc space equal to the size of memory being used (to store the image file, although unless you are low on disc space, this should not be a problem).

P.S. Stand by in actuality refers to a bunch of modes, with hibernation being one of them.

[toxxin]

When you buy a laptop, typically both are enabled. I bought one last year and both are enabled by default.

Standby mode kicks in after a shorter period of time of inactivity....and then hibernate activates after a longer period of time (typically 40 min)

Regardless, you shouldn't have to worry about it at all, it should already be preset for you. But if you do wanna check it out anyways just for your own info, its all located under Control Panel; Power Mangement =]

[Phasmatis]

Xion is right. This is how I'd say it:

Stand by: Your harddrive is turned off, your USB devices are suspended, and your CPU stops completely. Only a tiny bit of electricity is used, to keep the stuff in memory from disappearing.

Hibernation: Your computer is turned off completely, but everything in memory is dumped onto the harddrive for safekeeping. When you hit the power button, the CPU loads it back automatically and starts where you left off.

The main difference is: If you remove the battery while in standby, you will lose whatever is in memory. If you remove the battery in hibernation, nothing will be lost. You can have a computer in hibernation indefinitely (in theory).

Now, if you're using Windows XP, you probably use hibernation a lot (especially on a laptop). It's important to actually give it a real reboot every few days, because otherwise memory will "leak" and windows will forget about it. Rebooting recovers all of this.

[darkthief]

riteo thx people. so i suppose the safest thing to do is hibernate for me laptop.

[Phasmatis]

If you're going to be away for a few minutes, and want to lock up the laptop so it will need a password, just use standby. If you're going to have it turned off for a few hours, or put it in a bookbag, then use hibernate.

For desktops, I don't think they even give you a "hibernate" option, since it's pointless on a desktop anyway.