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With the 'power-saving' options in the control panel in windows XP, what is
the essential difference between the option of 'turn off hard discs' and
'system hibernates'?

Since choosing the hibernate option would also turn off the hard discs
because it shuts off the power supply.

"Evan Platt" <evan@*******************************> wrote in message
news:...
> On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 11:52:34 -0000, "john brook"
> <> wrote:
>
>>With the 'power-saving' options in the control panel in windows XP, what
>>is
>>the essential difference between the option of 'turn off hard discs' and
>>'system hibernates'?
>>
>>Since choosing the hibernate option would also turn off the hard discs
>>because it shuts off the power supply.
>
> Turning off the hard drive can only be done in certain circumstances -
> essentially if no activity is performed where the hard drive needs to
> be accessed. Say you just have a open web browser, and you're reading
> a large article, the hard drive could essentially be turned off. If,
> however, you then try to open a word document in your word processor
> stored on your hard drive, obviously the hard drive needs to be
> accessed.
>
> It's a one or the other - you can hibernate, or you can shut down the
> hard drive and still use the computer. But obviously you can't
> hibernate and still use the computer.
>
> Make sense?
> --
> To reply via e-mail, remove The Obvious and .invalid from my e-mail
> address.

Evan many thanks. think i will just choose the hibernate option.

john brook wrote:

> With the 'power-saving' options in the control panel in windows XP, what is
> the essential difference between the option of 'turn off hard discs' and
> 'system hibernates'?
>
> Since choosing the hibernate option would also turn off the hard discs
> because it shuts off the power supply.

The computer is still powered on when you use the option to "turn off
discs". They aren't actually powered down. They are just stopped
spinning. They are still powered but told to not spin.

Hibernate mode saves the contents of memory to a file (hiberfil.sys) and
then powers off the computer.