My last computer had one of too many power breaks – the electricity popped, and eventually had my hard-drive corrupted (probably). After reading a few articles about hibernation, I'm yet to understand – Can my computer be damaged in case of a power break, while hibernated?
And on the same topic, is there a way to configure my UPS to gracefully shutdown the computer after a period of time that the power doesn't come back on?
Is there a dedicated driver, or software, for each UPS that should have come with it?
And one last thing – I read an article about Shutting down after being idle. It does, however, force the programs to close, which leads me to the next logical question – forcing the programs to quit will leave all changes unsaved? Is there a way to gracefully shutdown the computer?
Turns out to be 3 questions. Will summarize them here for convenience:
- Can my computer be damaged in case of a power break, while hibernated?
- How can I configure my UPS to shutdown gracefully after a period of time?
- Is there a way to gracefully shutdown the computer?
Best Answer
When you put a computer in Hibernation mode it essentially goes into a shutdown state with the exception that it stores the contents of memory into the hard disk. Unlike sleep were it still uses a little bit of power to keep everything in memory hibernation mode doesn't. Power breaks shouldn't effect you so long as you have the computer in hibernation mode:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/sleep-and-hibernation-frequently-asked-questions
An alternative if you really want to be secure against these types of threats is to get a UPS (Uninterpretable Power Supply). You will plug the UPS into the wall and the computer into the UPS. The UPS has a battery so if the power comes down your system will still be up (usually around 30 minutes). Most UPS have software to start a shutdown immediately once it knows the power has gone down.