Quick Question on sleep mode and power outage

Yes, the computer would lose everything if there was a loss of power during sleep. It would complain heavily when you tried to wake it and it would need to be rebooted.

The alternatives are hibernation and hybrid sleep.
- Hibernation saves all the data to disk
- Hybrid sleep does sleep but it saves all the data to disk as well

Windows 7 Help said:

Sleep and hibernation: frequently asked questions
Here are answers to some common questions about sleep and hibernation.

Sleep is a power-saving state that allows a computer to quickly resume full-power operation (typically within several
seconds) when you want to start working again. Putting your computer into the sleep state is like pausing a DVD player:
The computer immediately stops what it’s doing and is ready to start again when you want to resume working.

Hibernation is a power-saving state designed primarily for laptops. While sleep puts your work and settings in memory and
draws a small amount of power, hibernation puts your open documents and programs on your hard disk, and then turns off
your computer. Of all the power-saving states in Windows, hibernation uses the least amount of power. On a laptop, use
hibernation when you know that you won’t use your laptop for an extended period and won't have an opportunity to charge
the battery during that time.

Hybrid sleep is designed primarily for desktop computers. Hybrid sleep is a combination of sleep and hibernate—it puts
any open documents and programs in memory and on your hard disk, and then puts your computer into a low-power state
so that you can quickly resume your work. That way, if a power failure occurs, Windows can restore your work from your
hard disk. When hybrid sleep is turned on, putting your computer into sleep automatically puts your computer into hybrid
sleep. Hybrid sleep is typically turned on by default on desktop computers.

Denis

I was just digging out info on hybrid sleep which I added to my previous post just as you posted your reply.

I agree that hybrid sleep seems the most appropriate sleep state for your desktop.

And there is some guidance in See Available Sleep States - TenForumsTutorials

Denis

Major.... just a small short comment, I promise.....

Full power loss protection is what most think of when talking a UPS. Just as important is the clean power it provides, and the protections from blips, spikes, brownouts...... anything that would fall into the category of "the lights, just flickered! %$#%^%$% ".