Hibernate, stand by, or shutdown?

Question: When shutting down your computer, do you want to hibernate, sleep (also known as stand by), or shutdown?

Answer: Well before you can answer that question it helps to know what the differences are and what you are doing with your computer. If you are using a laptop and are in the middle of working on a project, document, or something that you cannot close right away, then hibernate will be your preferred choice. Hibernate will save the current information to a part of your hard disk then shut the computer down. When you turn the computer back on, it will read from that portion of your hard drive and then resume Windows from where you left off at.

When you put the computer to sleep or stand by, it will put the computer in to a low power state where the hard drive is still running and using power even if the computer appears to be off. When turning it back on
it will start up much faster than just turning it on from an off state but if the computer loses power while in that standby mode you will lose any work you may be working on.

Shutdown is exactly as it sounds, it will turn off the computer. The next time you start it up it will take longer than the other two options but does not use any additional power or hard drive space while it is off.

Written By Matt Van Arsdel
Mother Lode Internet
Technical Support Team

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