While we shut down our PCs from the start menu of Windows, we all have noticed the sleep and hibernate options. Ever wondered what those options do? Well, they have some differences in terms of how they work. For people who own notebooks, these two options can be very useful. In this article, we will help you to understand what do those modes do and what’s their difference.

Sleep Mode

When you put your PC into the Sleep mode, it saves all your open apps, files and works in the RAM. It is same like the way you sleep. Your body organs do the work but you take rest and save more energy. The same way your PC goes into a low power state and the whole operating system stays saved in the RAM. This way the PC saves a lot of power and still manages to stay technically ‘on’. In one word you can say it is the ‘standby’ mode. You can quickly resume your work and it gets back to normal mode in seconds.

Hibernate Mode

Hibernate mode is almost similar to the Sleep mode but here your files and applications are not saved into the RAM. In Hibernate mode they are saved into the Hard Disk. For this reason, your PC can be turned off completely. What that means is it uses Zero power and is pretty useful if your notebook’s battery is almost dead. Once you turn your PC on it resumes from where you left it. However, as the files are saved now on your Hard disk drive it takes a bit more time to resume than Sleep mode which is almost negligible in real.

If you are leaving your notebook for a short period of time then Sleep mode is the best. But if you are leaving your notebook for a longer period of time then you should use the Hibernate mode. Same applies if your notebook’s battery is almost dead and you need some time to plug it back. I hope this article helped you in understanding the uses and differences between Sleep and Hibernate modes.