Confusion Between "Hibernate" and "Sleep"

Question

Confusion Between "Hibernate" and "Sleep"

Anonymous

Hi,

I've just updated my desktop PC and have migrated from Win 10 Home to Win 11 Pro. I am trying to schedule backups to run overnight (local and cloud). This ran for years without issue on my old Win 10 machine. I think I need my computer to be in sleep mode when I am not using it. I am basing this on the following definitions, picked up on the Community:

Sleep - All non-essential activities and drivers are stopped and the processor goes into power-conservation mode

Hibernate - The current system state is stored to hard drive, and the system powers off

My understanding of that is that if I put the computer into Sleep mode then any scheduled task will wake it up and run unattended. This certainly seemed to happen with Win 10. In Hibernate mode nothing will run unless the system is first woken up through the keyboard or mouse.

In Settings / System / Power / Screen, Sleep and Hibernate Timeouts I only get settings for "Turn my screen off after" and "Make my device sleep after". There is no setting for Hibernate. However when the system reaches the "Make my device sleep after" time it hibernates! Everything shuts down and no scheduled tasks will run.

Please can someone advise how I can put my system into a very low power consumption mode (sleep??) overnight but it can be woken by scheduled tasks.

TIA

Nigel

Windows 11 Pro 24H2.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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2 answers

Answer 1

Hello, njlparadise.

We appreciate you posting in Microsoft community.

Benefiting from your detailed description, I noticed that you have some confusion about “Hibernate” and “Sleep”.

I'm glad to have the opportunity to help you with this issue.

First of all, I can roughly explain to you the difference between the two.

In the “Hibernate” state, the system current data is dumped to the hard disk, and then the power to all devices is cut off, and when the system recovers, the system re-reads the previous data from the hard disk and returns to the pre-Hibernate state.

“Sleep” state, similar to Hibernate, the system will store all the data in memory to the hard disk, and then turn off the power supply of all devices except RAM, so that the data in memory is still maintained, unless in the Sleep state in the encounter of power failure, otherwise in the recovery, the system will directly use the data in memory to restore to the pre-Sleep state, which is obviously much faster than Hibernate recovery. This is obviously faster than the Hibernate recovery.

Refer to Microsoft Support for descriptions of the multiple power states:

System power states - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn

If you wish to use scheduled tasks to wake up the system, you can first refer to the step-by-step instructions on this page:

How to Schedule Windows 11 to Wake from Sleep Mode Automatically

Disclaimer: Microsoft provides no assurances and/or warranties, implied or otherwise, and is not responsible for the information you receive from the third-party linked sites or any support related to technology.

Also, regarding your question about using Task Scheduler to launch programs from sleep this is a more specialized question, I noticed that you are also a professional user and I wish I could handle your question, however, it would be more appropriate to post it on Microsoft Learn as there are more users posting these questions there and you can click on “Ask a Question” where there are experts who can provide a more specialized solutions.

Attached link:

Microsoft Q&A | Microsoft Learn

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation, my friend.

Best Regards.

Jeffrey - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 2

Anonymous

Thanks Jeffery, I've reposted in Microsoft Learn.

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Confusion Between "Hibernate" and "Sleep"

2 answers