The term "dream" is familiar to every user of Windows operating systems, regardless of whether he ever used this opportunity or not. And this is not about some hidden settings, but about the standard shutdown menu, called up by pressing the "Start" button. In the proposed list of actions there is a dream and hibernation (standby mode in Win XP). Although it is believed that these features are designed primarily for laptop owners, in fact, this is far from the case. Not only that, the idea was so successful that in the latest versions of Windows, Microsoft even introduced an innovation - a hybrid sleep mode, focused on personal computers.
Before we look at what sleep and hibernation of Windows 7 are, we’ll clarify one curious fact. On the Web every now and then you can find admiring user reviews of the latest Windows operating systems, according to which the computer’s download speed after switching to a new version of the system increases significantly (10, 8 and even 6 seconds are indicated). Similar data is sometimes indicated by the developer himself. That's just not all users observe this fantastic speed. There is no cheating! Just “completely by accident" does not indicate that such a download is performed only under the condition that Windows 7 hibernation is used, and not a standard full power off.
The sleep mode in Windows systems is a special way to turn off the computer, allowing you to resume working with the same data in seconds that was at the time of the "sleep". It can be compared with the “Pause” and “Save position” functions in the players. Sleep and hibernation of Windows 7 can be involved if three conditions are met: the BIOS of the motherboard supports the modes, the correct device drivers are installed, the operating system “knows” about these functions. To make corrections in the BIOS, go to the settings (Del button immediately after switching on) and select the desired state in the ACPI parameters (S1 - S4):
S1 - power is supplied to the processor and memory, but execution pipelines are suspended. Devices that have not explicitly set their registers may be disabled;
S2 is the same as S1, but the processor is de-energized;
S3 (STR, Suspend-to-RAM, Standby) is one of the most popular, especially among laptop owners. All components are disabled, except RAM. Due to this, all the information in it at the time of transition to the standby mode does not disappear. When you turn on the user almost instantly gets the opportunity to continue the interrupted work. Power consumption does not exceed 1 W. There is one drawback, but significant - even with a short-term power outage, all data is lost;
S4 (aka Windows 7 hibernation) is the most reliable mode. All data in memory at the time of shutdown is written to the hard disk (a dump is created). When turned on, the operating system reads information from the hiberfil.sys file. With a low-speed hard drive and a large amount of installed RAM, recovery from S4 can take longer than downloading from scratch.
There is also a hybrid sleep mode. There is nothing complicated in it, because the name itself gives a hint. Hybrid mode is a combined S3 and S4. With this shutdown, the data is not only stored in the RAM modules, but also dumped into the dump. If in the interval between turning off and turning on the power supply did not interrupt, then the system resumes by reading the state of the memory cells. If, for any reason, the data in RAM is lost, then the system is restored from the dump (exactly the same as in the case of S4).
You can use sleep modes on laptops as well as on personal computers. If there are no problems with power supply, you can recommend choosing S3 mode.