Nope. The CPU is completely shut off in either case. The standby mode draws just enough battery power for the memory but in most cases it’s so minimal. You’ll notice the whole system goes cool. In hibernation, everything is off.

Then what’s the difference between “off” and “hibernation” other than just a faster boot time?

Hibernation writes the contents of your RAM to the hard disk and shuts everything down. Then when resuming, the contents are copied back to RAM and you’re up and working right where you left off. When you shut down the machine, everything is off and you boot up from scratch. It’s worth it to use hibernation since you get a faster boot time and it doesn’t use power like standby does. Basically you get a faster boot than shutting the computer down, and the resumability of standby with less power consumption.

From windows\sonysys\logs\build.log: “[3] q332179 banias cpu driver”

...learn something new every day.  Thanks. :wink:

Ok I’ve finally made the swithch from a VAIO SRX99 to a TR3A.  :D Seems I’ve encountered the usual problem of a slow bootup due to Norton Internet Security.  :( After reading all the posts on boot times it seems hibernation is the way to go. I know standby time is +/- 90 hours which is great if you keep plugged into power most of the time. Can someone please give me an idea how long hibernation lasts for the standard TR battery? :?:

You are confusing Hibernation with Standby. Hibernation does not use-up any battery reserves as the contents of the RAM is stored on the HDD. Standby mode keeps the RAM alive and consumes some battery power, although much less than a fully running system.

Which one to use? It depends on your needs:

a. STANDBY recovers very fast as everything is still in RAM. It consumes some battery power and thus is recommended for short periods of power-off.

b. HIBERNATE is slower as there is a “load time”(i.e. from HDD to RAM), but this is MUCH faster than a standard reboot. It consumes no battery power and is recommended for normal use.

c. REGULAR (i.e. reboot), it’s the slowest but as it loads everything on startup, any memory/data issues are cleared.

FWIW, I have configured my TR3AP1 to “hibernate” when the lid is closed.  I perform a reboot if anything becomes unstable

I use standby only, no hibernate.  I use standby overnight and for a day or two at a time and only reboot when security patches or software installs tell me I have to.  I disabled hibernate altogether.

The worst that happens if the battery runs out is the machine turns off and next time you go on it boots up as if you had turned it off.  You won’t lose any data unless you don’t save, which you should do before you standby/hibernate anyway.

One Question: Is it safe to move the laptop around when it is in standby mode? For instance, will it damage the harddisk or the data?

IIRC, the hard drive heads are parked in standby mode.

[quote author=“richtrader”]I use standby only, no hibernate.  I use standby overnight and for a day or two at a time and only reboot when security patches or software installs tell me I have to.  I disabled hibernate altogether.

The worst that happens if the battery runs out is the machine turns off and next time you go on it boots up as if you had turned it off.  You won’t lose any data unless you don’t save, which you should do before you standby/hibernate anyway.

Interesting difference in how we see things   Just out of curiosity, is the main reason why you prefer STANDBY versus HIBERNATE the fact that it starts-up much faster?

I for one can live with the relatively fast startup from HIBERNATE… and I don’t have to worry about battery drain.

[quote author=“flashfox”]
Interesting difference in how we see things   Just out of curiosity, is the main reason why you prefer STANDBY versus HIBERNATE the fact that it starts-up much faster?

I for one can live with the relatively fast startup from HIBERNATE… and I don’t have to worry about battery drain.

Okay.  I have to be honest.  A large part of it is the faster startup, but part of it is this unfounded phobia I’ve always had about wearing out hard drives.  Hibernate seems to make the hard drive churn a lot.  Maybe I need some couch time or hypnosis to get over this.

Regardless, the last laptop I had before the TR was a Toshiba Portege which I kept pretty much in standby for over three years straight in between uses and never had a problem.  I also have a friend who’s battery managed to die in hibernate mode for the exact same model of Portege (she didn’t use the computer for a couple of months) and she couldn’t get it back and that alarmed me a bit as well.  I finally found some obscure keystroke sequence to perform on the Toshiba knowledgebase and fixed it for her, but it was touch and go for a while there.

[quote author=“richtrader”][quote author=“flashfox”]
Interesting difference in how we see things   Just out of curiosity, is the main reason why you prefer STANDBY versus HIBERNATE the fact that it starts-up much faster?

I for one can live with the relatively fast startup from HIBERNATE… and I don’t have to worry about battery drain.

Okay.  I have to be honest.  A large part of it is the faster startup, but part of it is this unfounded phobia I’ve always had about wearing out hard drives.  Hibernate seems to make the hard drive churn a lot.  Maybe I need some couch time or hypnosis to get over this.

Regardless, the last laptop I had before the TR was a Toshiba Portege which I kept pretty much in standby for over three years straight in between uses and never had a problem.  I also have a friend who’s battery managed to die in hibernate mode for the exact same model of Portege (she didn’t use the computer for a couple of months) and she couldn’t get it back and that alarmed me a bit as well.  I finally found some obscure keystroke sequence to perform on the Toshiba knowledgebase and fixed it for her, but it was touch and go for a while there.

FWIW,  Hard Disk Drives are much more robust nowadays. After all, they are in laptops which are “mobile"devices

I have been using “HIBERNATE"with the TR3AP1 with my previous Micron XT2 and my earlier Panasonic Thoughbook CF20. Never had any disk related problems (apart from trashing it with software)