Sleep Mode?

For decades, I have shut down my computers every night. I knew that there was this new thing called sleep mode, but considered it a waste of electricity.

I recently read several articles about new computers and sleep mode. Apparently, the amount of power now needed to keep the RAM and CPU hot is insignificant. The articles show the power usage of new, high-end desktop computers to be five to ten watts in sleep mode, compared to about one watt when powered down.

So maybe I'll join the 21st century and start using sleep mode. Save that wasted 35-second boot time once a day.

EnergyStar.gov has the real specs on a bunch of computers.

It shows mine as using 2.7 watts in sleep mode. And that is with 64 GB of RAM. I don't know how much less it would be for only 16 GB. Pretty impressive, and there are many that use considerably less power.

These damned LEDs on everything probably use more power than the computer.

I read a study once, compared the stress&strain of shut down and restart with the aging of electronic components caused by being always on.

Always on won by a mile.

My dad always shut his computer down as soon as he was done with it. "Afraid hackers will come in via the phone line and steal my data" was his explanation.

He was too old to explain it to him.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I read a study once, compared the stress&strain of shut down and restart with the aging of electronic components caused by being always on.

Always on won by a mile.

That must have been about a hundred years ago.
The very low voltage and low current devices suffer not from strain.

I think Apple computers probably use less current in sleep mode. After all, they don't have to leave windows open.

(Should I have put this in the terrible puns thread?)

Something like 90% of HDD failures come when waking up.

Quote :

Going to the 2012 list, I found that the 27-inch iMac uses 79.8 W of power when it's actively in use, 20.6 W when it's in that "idle mode with display off", 1.03 watts when in sleep mode and .22 W when turned off.

Compare to a light bulb. A night light uses 3 or 4 watts, a LED light about 1 watt.

My brain is in sleep mode most of the time.

Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population

This rather lengthy article (.pdf) gives no indication that start-up is a significant cause for HDD failure.

Quote :

The power cycles indicator counts the
number  of  times  a  drive  is  powered  up  and  down.   In
a server-class deployment, in which drives are powered
continuously,  we  do  not  expect  to  reach  high  enough
power cycle counts to see any effects on failure rates.
Our results find that for drives aged up to two years, this
is true, there is no significant correlation between fail-
ures and high power cycles count. But for drives 3 years
and  older,  higher  power  cycle  counts  can  increase  the
absolute failure rate by over 2%.

In my own experience, I have not found a problem with drive failure because the computer was powered up every day. When I have had drive failures, it was while the disk was young, i.e., it was faulty from the start.

I have tried to find something on the web that supports your statement, but have not been able to. It may be true that bad drives are discovered quite frequently on power up.

Drive technology may have improved since 1989.

You mean they don't make ten-pound, 30-megabyte drives anymore?

Got up this morning to find that the power had been out for about thirty minutes during the night. I had left the computer in sleep mode, and it was still sleeping just fine. The very small power consumption allowed it to easily survive during the outage. That's the good part.

Then it occurred to me that if the power was out long enough to drain the UPS batteries (the DSL modem and the router use several times the power that the computer does in sleep mode), then the computer would lose power and close abnormally, without shutting down the OS, as the computer cannot receive or act on a shutdown command from the UPS.

Gotta look into this one.

_Howard wrote:

Then it occurred to me that if the power was out long enough to drain the UPS batteries

Aren't the batteries self-recharging?

"self-recharging"? Now there's a product I would invest in.
Do you mean rechargeable? Yes, they will recharge, but not when the power is off.

Power comes back on, batteries automatically top themselves off?

Yes, the batteries recharge when the power comes back on.

My concern is when the power is off long enough that the UPS batteries become discharged to the point that it shuts down and the computer has no power. Then, if the computer is sleeping, it will shut off without properly closing down the system. It's like pulling the plug.

If the computer is fully on, then the UPS sends a notice to the computer that it is shutting down, and the computer goes through the normal closing. Can't do that when it's sleeping.

Ah, I see what you mean. How often does your power cut off? Hasn't been a problem in my neighborhood in about ten years -- still is, up in the San Juans though.

_Howard wrote:

Yes, they will recharge, but not when the power is off.

I have the solution.

Connect your UPS to a backup UPS. When the first one runs out of power, it'll charge up from the second one. Then when the second runs out, it'll charge from the first which is now fully charged again.

Presto! I'm brilliant.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Ah, I see what you mean.  How often does your power cut off?  Hasn't been a problem in my neighborhood in about ten years -- still is, up in the San Juans though.

We lose power a few times a year, some years it's many times. Often enough to make a UPS a requirement for the computer.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I have the solution.

Connect your UPS to a backup UPS.  When the first one runs out of power, it'll charge up from the second one.  Then when the second runs out, it'll charge from the first which is now fully charged again.

Presto!  I'm brilliant.

Thank you, Mt. Trump.

I'm probably one of the most brilliant minds in the world, ask anyone who knows me, they'll tell you I'm one of the most brilliant minds in the world. I'll tell you, I'm so brilliant that smart people ask ME for advice! That's how brilliant I am. Trust me on this, I'm probably the most brilliant person in the world.

_Howard wrote:

We lose power a few times a year, some years it's many times. Often enough to make a UPS a requirement for the computer.

But not enough for a backup generator?

I seriously considered it many times. But to get one that's big enough to make it worthwhile is a big expense and a real hassle for maintenance.

_Howard wrote:

My concern is when the power is off long enough that the UPS batteries become discharged to the point that it shuts down and the computer has no power.

I remember one time at the hospital, we had a backup generator which kicked in automatically during power failures, and it ran out of gas. Nobody knew we were running on generator, the handoff was seamless. But when it ran out of gas, after 6-8 hours whatever it was, everything went dark.

That's a no-no in a hospital.