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Everything You Need to Know About Hibernate Mode in Your PC

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John Smith
Everything You Need to Know About Hibernate Mode in Your PC

Hibernation is an important capability of your laptop or PC. Activating this mode means, your computer can stay on 24×7 without draining its battery, and ensure that the system is resistant to power failure, unlike the case with Sleep mode. Although most of the users are not aware of the feature, or even if they are, they don’t give much thought to it.

However, there are questions and confusion around the advantages and disadvantages of putting your system on hibernation mode. So, is hibernation harmful to your computer? How often should you use the hibernate option? 

Before getting to the answers to these questions, you must understand how hibernation works, or the kind of impact it has on computer performance.

How does Hibernate Mode Work?

Hibernation mode is designed to preserve power by saving any open contents to the storage disk. These storage disks are technically known as “non-volatile” storage media, because of not being prone to data loss.

This mode is somewhat similar to a “shutdown/restart.” Even if a power failure occurs, the computing power will still be recycled. 

You can understand hibernate mode in contrast to the “Sleep” mode wherein, the computer instantly turns to RAM turning into low-power mode. This mode allows your system to quickly power on. The disadvantage of “Sleep” mode is that it continuously consumes power because of RAM’s volatile nature. 

On the other hand, hibernating computers require more time to resume, as they are fetching the data from the hard drives. Hence, the process is more time-consuming.

Enabling Hibernate Mode on Your PC or Laptop

The Hibernate mode is available for all Windows versions. To enable hibernate mode in Windows 10, you can go to the Start menu, then click on “Settings -> System -> Power & sleep -> Additional power settings.”

The default hibernate time is 180 minutes on battery and 720 minutes in plug-in mode, however, you can adjust this in “Advanced Settings.” 

Impact of Hibernating Mode on PC Performance and System Health

Even if the hibernate mode is made to save your device’s energy, but still, it was believed that frequent use of hibernate mode can damage the hard disk performance over time. This belief has changed in 2020 itself, allowing everyone to use Hibernate mode just as casually as you use the sleep mode, without having to worry about any negative impact.

Now, is it bad for the computer or not? Your hard disk is the one who decides this. If your PC is running on a hard disk drive (HDD), the application of hibernation will freeze all your PC actions and start storing in hibernation files, called hiberfil.sys in Windows systems. This eventually, leads to a huge amount of data being stored in your hard disk.

Since SSD is known for its longevity and has no moving parts, your system will not undergo the wear and tear you commonly experience with HDD.

How Often Should You Hibernate Then?

As stated earlier, SSD computers are less impacted as compared to HDD computers while running on hibernation mode. However, the use of hibernate mode will not cause a noteworthy performance drop if you use it once a week. It is better to hibernate only when required. For instance, hibernate only when you will be away for 12 to 24 hours and want to resume everything without shutdowns, otherwise, go for a proper shutdown.

In SSD systems, it will not take long to hibernate the PC and resume it up. It allows you to be more relaxed, as it just writes the last state to the drive and powers off easily. However, there is a little disadvantage of hibernate mode, with SSD, which is, the PC’s settings will not get stored sometimes, making it irregular.

Whatever might be the case, if you do believe in the fact that hibernate mode can be fruitful for you, you can add the Hibernate option to the Start menu for quick access. Otherwise, you may consider disabling it to save on storage space.

John Smith is a creative person who has been writing blogs and articles about cybersecurity. He writes about the latest updates regarding and how it can improve the work experience of users. His articles have been published in many popular e-magazines, blogs, and websites.

Source:- https://noble-antivirus.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hibernate-mode-in-your-pc/

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