Hibernate vs. Standby

Setting the system to hibernate allows for a faster startup when the system is turned on. Systems should not be left on constantly as this leaves them wide open to attacks if they are connected to the internet. It is also a waste of power and will cause unnecessary wear and tear.

Hibernate and Standby are very similar. In each case, the system takes a snapshot of what is going on and saves it to a file, to be read on startup. Hibernate writes this file to the harddrive as hiberfil.sys. Since it is on the harddrive, the machine can be disconnected from the power source and moved without loosing the hibernate settings.

Standby does the same thing but writes the file to memory instead of the harddrive. The memory requires standby power to keep the information. If the power is disconnected, the file disappears and the system must start from scratch.