Putting your computer into hibernation mode always seems so snappy compared to taking it back out of hibernation mode and resuming your work. Why is it so much slower to spool the system back up than to spool it down?
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
The Question
SuperUser reader enthrops is curious:
So why exactly is it such a slow process to return the computer from a hibernated state?
The Answer
SuperUser contributor wolfo9999 explains:
One thing his answer doesn’t touch on, which definitely plays a role in perception of time when hibernating/resuming the computer, is what you’re doing during the process. Typically, when you hibernate your computer, you initiate the hibernation and then walk away (whether it takes 20 seconds or 2 minutes doesn’t matter to you, because you’re rarely there staring at it). When you resume the computer, however, you’re sitting right there staring at it waiting to get back to work so the difference between a 30 second resume and a 1 minute resume is significant.
Note: Assume you have 8GB of RAM and a SSD with 400MB/s throughput. It will still take 8*1024MB/400MB/s = 20.48s. This is not the same speed as resume from RAM.
Assuming a RAM throughput of 15,000MB/s, the resume time is 0.55 seconds.
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