Hi

I have some problems in suspending my notebook to disk. But I can suspend it to RAM. I am wondering whether it is safe to carry the notebook in suspended to RAM mode. Would it resume for some reason and get heated up while it is in the bag? Is it recomended to carry a notebook suspended to RAM generally.

Thanks

Neranjana

Though not a professional in these things, I'm pretty sure that suspending to RAM means the memory chips need to be powered (so that they can contain the data and not lose it) as long as the suspend state is on. Suspend to disk shouldn't need power, as the system is basically dumped to a file/files on the disk and read there when booted. When you suspend to RAM, the laptop's power is mostly cut off (I think) but of course some electricity is used to keep RAM powered; I think it resembles the state of a television when it's not really powered off but "shut down" using a remote controller (a red light usually is lit up to show there is power on in the device). Anyway I don't think it harms if you do carry the thing around, the disks should spin down and so on, it's just that the thing does consume battery a little (correct me if I'm wrong). It shouldn't resume before you tell it to, especially if the lid is closed and buttons covered so you can't accidentally press them - but then again, I have seen a situation (when testing my own laptop's suspending, and I don't use it anymore, it's useless) where the thing did wake up without asking.

Shortly: shouldn't be a problem, but might.

being a student I often carry my laptop around while in suspend to ram, in fact i hardly ever turn it off or even suspend to disk.

However, sometimes it does accidentaly turn on, i think because i carry it with a lot of heavy books in a backpack, and the power button is pressed through the screen. (dont want to think what its doing to the screen)

anyway, it does get quite hot, but i usially hear the disks spinnning and turn it off.

(in other words, u should be fine- dont worry about it)

I suggest Suspend-to-Disk because it will not use any power. Suspend-to-RAM will use power to keep the chips charge during this mode. The amount of power consumption depends how many memory chips are installed in the system. For reliability, do not use either one. Just power down.

Notebook computers contains non-ECC memory, so it is best to power down at the end of the day.

Don't do it.

I have a friend who works for a laptop vendor, who replaced the same customers motherboard twice because he was doing that, before realizing what the customer was doing and warning him that he wasn't going to get a 3rd replacement under warranty

that being said, some laptops might be ok, but some defiantly wont, and I don't like playing Russian roulette with expensive hardware

I have to agree with Kahless. I don't work much on laptops except my own, but I have learned a lot over the years about computers' power consumption and ventilation.

Because a laptop's design is compact with the components practically on top of each other heat becomes a serious problem. And if you contain that heat inside a bag that heat will have nowhere to escape and instead those components will continue to produce heat until they cook, possibly damaging other nearby components.

I had to replace my laptop's battery once after keeping it closed in its case while charging overnight. I also found that even after powering it off if you pack it up right away you also pack up the heat that hasn't ventilated yet. It's best to let it cool for a few minutes before closing it into its case.

BTW, pengu, you should definitely NOT carry heavy books in the same bag with a laptop. You should carry nothing in such a way that it can put pressure on the lid. The device that produces the images is a long, delicate bulb, usually across the bottom side of the screen. Too much pressure close to it will break it and then you'll have no display. I've seen the result before.

neranjana,
What are your "problems in suspending my notebook to disk"? Perhaps there is a solution.

Electro,
Most of my desktops have non-ECC RAM, do you think they need to be pwr. cycled daily? Why does ECC make a difference?

same here. I still have my notebook from when I was a student and I only had it shutdown before I went home. It never got damaged.
This doesn't mean of course that this works for everyone, it's just my experience but isn't that the main purpose of suspend to ram, to save time (bootup) and keep programs open when walking from one room to the next ?
If this wouldn't work the feature would be pretty useless imho ...

Hi

I have a Dell Latitude D820 with Centrino duo, 2 GB RAM, and SATA hd. I have installed Mandriva 2007 spring powerpack. The suspend to RAM feature works fine. But when I try to suspend to disk, the system displays the splash screen (which is normal) for about 5 seconds and then the screen goes blank and the power doesn't shut down. I checked the log and thought I found the problem which was a problem in 2.6.17.13 kernel with USB. I upgraded the kernel and the suspend to disk worked. Then with different swap file sized I noticed that when the swap file was large (greater than 4 GB) suspend to disk fails the same way. So I installed the swap as a little higher than 2GB. Then suspend to disk worked for a couple of days. But now it's not working again. I tried disabling ACPI. In my other notebook Fujitsu, with Mandriva 2006.0 version, the suspend feature didn't work when ACPI was enabled. But that was fixed with Mandriva 2006.1 (spring). With the Dell machine, nothing seems to get the suspend to disk to work reliably. Can somebody give me a tip on how to find the problem. I tried the system logs but couldn't see any problem.

Thanks

Neranjana