Hibernation - Enabling and Benefits [Explained]

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What is the most obvious thing that even a noob can do on a computer? Well, Shutdown & Restart can be called as the answer other than powering ON. Keeping the noobs aside, have you ever used Standby feature? Many of your might give affirmative replies but do you know there is another state in which you can keep your computer so as to resume from where you left it. This state of condition is called Hibernation which is different from standby state.

Hibernation differs from Standby in many aspects. In standby, computer keeps on running at a low power consumption mode so that you can quickly resume from where you left it. Hibernation is not that fast but it allows your computer to turn off. This means that you can resume from the point of task from where you hibernate it.

Enable Hibernation on Windows

Before trying Hibernation, you need to enable it.

To enable it, go to Control Panel > Power Options.

power_options

Select the Hibernate tab and click OK.

hibernate_power_options

How to Hibernate
Once hibernation is enabled, you can hibernate your computer at the Turn Off screen only.

turn_off_screen_1

After holding down Shift button the Stand By icon will change to Hibernate icon as shown below.

turn_off_screen_2

What happens when you hibernate?

To make it clear in the first explaination, let us start from basics. We all know RAM is volatile i.e. it holds content till it is in power ON state and contents goes off as it is switched OFF. Whatever is to be executed, must be loaded into the main memory (RAM). When you hibernate, contents of RAM are as it is copied to the hard disk. Now you know why it was asking for space while enabling hibernation. The space required depends on how much RAM you have installed on your computer. Now when you power ON your system next time, those contents are written back to RAM from hard disk and you get the same working space left by you.

Benefits of hibernation

You get to resume from where you left even when you have switched off the power supply.
If your computer are one of those which take ages to boot up, then this is going to decrease your boot up time (in the sense that you have to wait less as compared to booting the OS).
All your web2.0 applications that are loaded in your browser remains as it is. For example: Gmail, Online photo editing tools etc (No need of reloading). This is a great benefit for dialup users who can’t afford to loose time while waiting for such heavy applications to load again.

Have you ever hibernate your computer? What was your experience? Have your say in the comments.