SSD: To sleep or not to sleep

NavyLCDR · 06 Aug 2017

swarfega said:

I watch a youtuber whose been in the business 25 years and he frequently states that hibernation is not really for desktops. I still stand by my statement that its better to turn the machine off when not in use.

And I completely agree! Hibernation is not really for desktops! And I also agree that I just turn my computer off, because with an SSD I have a <10 second boot time from full power off with Windows 10 fast startup disabled. The only time hibernation (for laptop type computers) or sleep (for desktop) computers would really benefit me is if I had a lot of work in progress that I wanted to return immediately to - and then, I would not trust sleep or hibernation to preserve that work because sleep requires power to maintain - suffer a power outage and that work is lost. And I just don't trust hibernation enough in Windows 10.

So all my computers just get turned completely off when not being used.

kitpzyxmsir · 09 Aug 2017

Josey Wales said:

There is a setting to have it wake by mouse movement.

I think that device manager setting is selected by default, no??

Anyway, that's the setting I had and it didn't work that one time, as I said, but it hasn't happened again.

It bothers me when I don't have an explanation for a weird behavior like that, but, oh well

AMDMan2016 · 09 Aug 2017

For years I was scared to turn my Computer off when not being used, read somewhere years ago, possibly from old HP PC manual that said "Do not turn off unless changing hardware or electrical storm" was an old slimline PC, that the power supply died on a few years ago

Now I shutdown my system nightly, or not set to sleep if I got something i'm working on, and then just remote in during the night via phone remote desktop app to check on it, or do another maintenance task if needed

Still use balanced power plan though, as I thought wouldn't be good running at High Peformance all day, and having CPU heat up more than it would on balance unless i'm wrong on that to lol

CountMike · 10 Aug 2017

To get back to SSD (to sleep or not). SSDs wake up instantly while HDDs can take a while to wake up and go back to what they were doing so it can produce a lag. Problem is that settings in Power management work on all or none of disks in system (including external) and can't be applied to a particular disk. That can build up number of starts which are not too good for their longevity and startup numbers are recorded in SMART which can't be changed.

sygnus21 · 10 Aug 2017

CountMike said:

That can build up number of starts which are not too good for their longevity and startup numbers are recorded in SMART which can't be changed.

You're more likely to upgrade the disk before losing it to start / stop cycles. I can't remember the last time I had a disk fail on me (knocks on wood) before ultimately upgrading it. And some of those replaced disks get moved to another machine where they're still chugging along.

Anything can fail, but I really think you'll be replacing the disk before stop / start cycle failure. Anyway I do agree SSD's are the way to go due to their quick startup times.

CountMike · 10 Aug 2017

sygnus21 said:

You're more likely to upgrade the disk before losing it to start / stop cycles. I can't remember the last time I had a disk fail on me (knocks on wood) before ultimately upgrading it. And some of those replaced disks get moved to another machine where they're still chugging along.

Anything can fail, but I really think you'll be replacing the disk before stop / start cycle failure. Anyway I do agree SSD's are the way to go due to their quick startup times.

Some would live longer than others no matter what but if those startups can be reduced, than why not. In any case delay can be quite noticeable and frankly annoying. Disks don't restart only when particular one is accessed but every time any other one is. And sound they make at that time, grrrr, whirl, wizzzz sounds very ominous.

sygnus21 · 10 Aug 2017

CountMike said:

And sound they make at that time, grrrr, whirl, wizzzz sounds very ominous.

Some things are inherent with the design. HDD's are mechanical drives with moving parts - that means noise and wear & tear. Such is the nature of mechanics.

Anyway the "noise" factor as well as slower speeds is why I no longer have any mechanical drives in my system. All SSD - 4 of them.

CountMike · 10 Aug 2017

I would like that too but 2 -3TB in SSDs would eat up money fast. I try to keep drives that are not needed all the time away and plug them in removable tray when needed but those are mostly backups and movies/music. So 2 x SSD and 1TB +2TB in HDDs is best I can do.

sygnus21 · 10 Aug 2017

I’ve no need for any 3TB SSD drives; especially given their costs. It took me forever to decide to get my one 2TB SSD drive, considering $600+ was killer. That said, I only did it because I wanted a fast drive for my game drive with is currently sitting at nearly 1TB by itself.

Outside of that, I’ve a 1TB SSD drive I use for daily backups, and two 512gig SSD drives, one housing my OS and its programs, the other housing my photos drive that I work from for my photography hobby.

My external drives include two Western Digital My Books (1 & 2TB drives), and a host of HDD drives that I use as hot swappable in my case. In fact, my HAF X case has two front bays dedicated to hot swap drives. Which is another reason I'm holding on to it.

Anyway, I don't even have any 3TB HDD's drives, yet.

jimbo45 · 11 Aug 2017

Hi there

For home users large size SSD's aren't economical yet -- especially if you want to hold things like music / DVD rips etc. Keep SSD for the OS and things like photoshop scratch (work) areas if doung photo / video editing.

SSD's won't die because of power on's of your machine.

If you aren't using the machine regularly then power it off -- it's always a good idea to minimize your consumption of gas / electric etc etc whatever the power costs in you area --here it's rediculously cheap (mainly geothermal) but I still turn off devices when not in use.

I have two NAS servers which though run 24/7 but run headless so unless i need to do anything with them there's no monitor attached. The HDD's when "idling" consume very little power and the OS (Linux) is minimal as there's almost nothing running apart from file sharing (samba) and a music server (squeezebox).

On most monitors (especially those which are also TV's) you usually you can set the hardware itself to turn off the screen automatically without changing any settings on the computer. There's usually on the monitors handset a menu where you can enable "energy saving mode" to perform this.

You'll probably need to turn on the monitor again when needed - but your desktop will work just fine once the screen is switched on again.

Cheers
jimbo