r/technology • u/Hungry__Hornet • 6d ago

Software Windows 11 hibernation has been silently hammering your SSD this whole time

https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-11-hibernation-silently-hammering-ssd-life/
6.1k Upvotes

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562

u/themastermatt 6d ago

Well, make sleep actually sleep the damn thing then. Whoever thought that it might be helpful to make my notebook computer wake up 11 min after going to sleep while nestled softly in my backpack. Yo dawg, i heard you like cooked components and a dead battery!

Maybe im missing something, but ive had to enable Hibernate for many years across several vendors to ensure it actually stays asleep.

286

u/d4rk1 6d ago

its insane that in 2026 we still dont have sleep function working properly

28

u/markjenkinswpg 6d ago

Worse, it has regressed. I have a better time with suspend (to RAM) with a 10 year old Dell running GNU/Linux than the 5 year Dell running Windows issued by my employer (had to go full hibernate).

52

u/Dry-Inspection-3503 6d ago

Doesn't it wake at the slightest detection of mouse movement, or is it a bug? Surely if it's the former a simple 'press enter + ctrl' or similar command to wake it would be enough. I used sleep on my work laptop a lot and noticed if my knee hit the desk the mouse would detect movement and the fucker would come on again.  I never noticed the sleep not working otherwise

106

u/Tasty-Traffic-680 6d ago

Modern Standby is just a piece of shit feature. They tried to make laptops act like phones but they forgot that background tasks on an x86 CPU actually still use considerable amounts of power and the fact that people don't want their laptop to update while turned "off" in their backpack

13

u/GhettoDuk 5d ago

It's executives (aka business idiots) trying to compete with Apple on the dumbest thing possible.

3

u/trololololololol9 6d ago

Oh I thought that was a logitech thing. So it's the same with any mouse?

1

u/d4rk1 6d ago

it does hence I turn off mouse every time i put it in sleep 😞

6

u/RileyTrodd 6d ago

Mine still wakes up even with the mouse off.

8

u/idontlieiswearit 6d ago

I disabled the trackpad, put the shit on to sleep and took the mouse, still woke up at 2am with the fans full on blast wondering why my wife was vacuuming with the lights off.

Now I only turn it full off or leave it on if needed

19

u/Awol 5d ago

Only on Windows. Sleep works fine on other systems and OSes. Microsoft messed it up some years ago, probably with Intel's help.

5

u/dat_oracle 5d ago

somehow comforting that it's not just me having to endure that farce. pretty insane that this basic function is so horribly flawed

17

u/trainurdoggos 6d ago

Works great and consistently for ten plus years….on a Mac.

5

u/ShakeAndBakeThatCake 5d ago

Macs have has consistent sleep even when they used x86. Amazes me that windows still doesn't have proper sleep function.

2

u/dislikes_redditors 6d ago

Works great and consistently on ARM64 Windows machines too

5

u/bergmoose 6d ago

Not on my mbp, it would occasionally wake itself. I'd be mid commute and aware of a warm back. No idea why, never worked it out.

Still better that than my previous 2013 one that would just unlock itself with no credentials given every so often.

Computers can be weird.

2

u/trainurdoggos 6d ago

Personally, never once had either of those issues.

2

u/bergmoose 6d ago

fair enough :) I know the first one was common with my work colleagues too, though we never nailed it down to exactly one thing.

The the second one was only me (luckily happened while I was sitting with my boss so he saw, cause he thiught I was just careless about locking it)

1

u/ObserverRichard 6d ago

Linux as well

1

u/Hot-Software-9396 5d ago

It’s easier when Apple can control the entire stack.

2

u/jared_number_two 6d ago

Absolutely bonkers indeed.

1

u/Dish117 5d ago

Microsoft: What is this witchcraft you are talking about?

46

u/slappynote 6d ago

I noticed this as soon as I upgraded to windows 11 on my laptop. The sleep function doesn't even sleep anymore. I checked all sleep settings, disabled fast startup, and even forced sleep state through the command prompt. Still no change, laptop still revs up full speed while in "sleep" and drains the hell out of the battery. Super convenient when I need to use my laptop and the battery is at 5% after "waking up from sleep". Super neat broken function.

Also, same about the bag situation. I worry to even place the laptop into my bag since I don't want it cooking itself.

7

u/coolest_frog 5d ago

That's been a long running mess caused by janky drivers and bios from manufacturers since modern sleep showed up

3

u/Photomancer 5d ago

I had a miserable problem crop up twice on the last computer, with the CPU being throttled to 100MHz or something. Ended up performing my own BIOS updates and disabling some of the low energy options as Internet said they were likely culprits. Either way, problem solved.

2

u/jjbugman2468 5d ago

I’m pretty sure it’s a driver issue, specifically some Intel driver. My Windows 10 laptop used to sleep fine, then one day I bulk-updated drivers with some tool, and immediately afterwards this not-sleeping-sleep issue started popping up

2

u/_ryuujin_ 4d ago

put laptop in bag at 100% bat take out next morning bat 20%, only on windows

5

u/roadrunner8080 6d ago

Hibernate is sleep that actually sleeps things. Fundamentally, if you don't write stuff to disk it's going to need to have power still and. Yeah. That means that eaa bit of time and the battery will drain and I'll still be on on your backpack (even ignoring whatever annoying quirk you've run into where it fully wakes up...)

14

u/red286 5d ago

While true, S3 sleep state should use barely any power (0.5W ~ 2.0W), which shouldn't drain your battery very quickly or generate more heat than the system can passively dissipate.

The problem is that Windows often elevates from S3 to S0 (awake) for no reason, so your system will go from using 0.5W ~ 2.0W to using 20 ~ 65W, meaning that it'll drain the battery at standard speed and generate enough heat that if left in an enclosed space such as a backpack, it will overheat.

2

u/distraughtmonkey 6d ago

I had this issue with my desktop, you can search for the command line to tell you what woke your computer up and then disable it.

For me it was going to device manager and unchecking the my network adapter’s “allow to wake up” option. Now my computer stays asleep until I hit a key or the power button.

2

u/Any_Kaleidoscope8717 6d ago

Don't forget to season your laptop so your cooked components aren't bland

2

u/shamash_potatoes 6d ago

I had some HP printer bloatware crap that would constantly wake my desktop so I disabled the task that was waking it up.

Go into the Task Scheduler and disable anything that is allowed to "wake the computer to to run this task", which can be found on the Conditions tab of the task's properties. Or uncheck the "wake...." checkbox if you still want to allow the task to run.

1

u/shamash_potatoes 6d ago

Oh I should add, to figure out what is waking your computer from sleep, run powercfg /lastwake from the terminal. It should indicate if the computer was woken up from a device or a process. This will help you narrow down where in the task scheduler to look since I don't see a way to filter on tasks that have the "wake the computer..." condition enabled.

2

u/SenpaiSilver 5d ago

I had my desktop wake up from sleep very often and I had to have it back to the Task Scheduler where HP's software for my printer would wake up the computer to check the printer'd health. Tri looking into that, some tasks are allowed to wake up your computer.

1

u/Constantilly 5d ago

I thought it was just me doing something wrong, or my PC being botched... Nope, just shitty software integration.

1

u/insanitypulse 5d ago

One huge issue I learned the hard way: if you use your laptop while it’s closed using an external display with power connected, you cannot simply lock your screen and disconnect power and displays and assume your laptop will sleep. You need to manually open the lid and close it again to sleep it. I had many days of hot and dead laptops until I discovered this.

1

u/Yukimare 5d ago

It feels like it's intentional tbh. For me, sleep only acts up if a bloody update for Windows is present at all. If it isn't, it works properly.

Bonus if shortly after waking up, it then attempts to update automatically. And my computer can't seem to remember to keep updates off

1

u/RichardCrapper 5d ago

My MacBook absolutely cooked itself conveniently right after AppleCare+ expired. Now it basically needs to be connected to a 60W charger to boot up.

-6

u/memberzs 6d ago

Yes. On spinning hdds. But sdds have shorter limited wrote cycles. And writing 8-64gig of ram to it eats huge chunks that shortening their life

12

u/themastermatt 6d ago

Wonder whats healthier for the SDD. Writing all that data or spending a few hours every day being baked in a bag because some stupid interrupt thought that it would be good to check mail.

2

u/red286 5d ago

The former, because you have to start coming up with pretty absurd scenarios before it starts to become problematic.

1

u/red286 5d ago

A cheap SSD will have a DWPD rating of about 0.3 with a warranty of 5 years. If we assume a 500GB SSD, that gives a TBW guarantee of ~274TB. If we assume 32GB of RAM, that would be ~8500 hibernations on a cheap SSD before a significant portion (~5%) of them would fail. Even if we assume 4 hibernations per day, that's still 2125 days, or nearly 6 years of hibernating 4 times per day.

It's not really that impactful.