Sleep bad for a computer?

Maxwell1

Solid State Member
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7
Location
UK
Hi,

Im not sure if this is in the right section but it didnt seem to suit any other either.

When doing uni work on my computer i usually have a couple of word documents open, a few PDF's, internet browser, photoshop, and a number of other programs. When i finish for the night its annoying to close all of them when i know in the morning i just have to open up every one again.

Therefore i usually just put my computer to sleep and wake it up in the morning. Is this bad for the computer? Should i shut it down so it can sort of refresh?

If anyone could let me know and the reasons why that would be really cool.

Thanks,
Max
 
Don't worry about it. What sleep does is keep machine state at RAM, which is recalled when computer wakes up into normal mode. It requires power (albeit low level) to RAM, but this is not any more harmful or taxing than normal usage of RAM.
 
Sleep is probably better for the hard drive. Shutting down and turning back on everyday would not only be slow and annoying but it's loading files off the hard drive everytime you start it up. Sleep just loads from RAM. I always just put my computers to sleep and restart them as needed.
 
Hibernation is similar to sleep except that machine state is stored in swap (HDD), so it does not require power for RAM.

Your booting time will be slow after hibernation; but remember that it really isn't slower at all, if you consider the time saved not needing to go through the same steps restoring machine state again (files opened, etc.).

With modern OS, hibernation cannot be considered as bad. Just normal usage, and a convenient one, too. :)
 
I don't use hibernation because there was a time when it seemed no matter what computer I but into hibernation, it wouldn't wake up. Or it would wake up 2 out of 3 times, but that 1 time I'd end up having to hard boot it to get it to come back on. I just got out of the habit of using it and instead use sleep or turn it off.
 
I dont like personal sleep option, because when power is off you loose all stuff loaded in RAM, so better option is hybernate, you can use it to save your power and when power is off no data is removed which is loaded in RAM.
 
Ok great, thats good to know cause my computer is only shut down properly when there are updates usually.

Thank you!
 
Hibernate seems to screw up most of the time for me and I end up having to restart. Sleep is faster and it works most of the time with a restart about every month or when updates need the computer to restart. Not gonna shut down everyday either.
 
I dont like personal sleep option, because when power is off you loose all stuff loaded in RAM, so better option is hybernate, you can use it to save your power and when power is off no data is removed which is loaded in RAM.

Your answer really doesn't make any sense. It doesn't fully power off so nothing in RAM is lost. The only risk is a power flash/outage which would have the exact same results as if the computer was turned on at the time.

And data is RAM is "lost" during hibernate. The difference is that it's stored in the hard drive and reloaded into RAM on boot.
 
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