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superspiffy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 6, 2007
740
0
I set the MBP to sleep in 10 min through the Energy Saver pref with the option to sleep the hdds. When it's about to sleep the screen dims, then turns black, then the sleep light comes on but does not blink no matter how long I leave it. The blinking only happens when I close the lid or when I select the Sleep option under the Apple logo. Is that normal behavior?
 

superspiffy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 6, 2007
740
0
Not sure. But if when the light doesn't blink the computer doesn't act irregularly I suppose it doesn't really matter :D

So you're saying when the light does blink the computer is acting irregularly? How does that make sense? Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my understanding the sleep light has to blink to indicate that the hdds are asleep when in Sleep mode.

I know it's a minor inconvenience but I'm OCD about these things and it's really annoying to wonder why the lights don't blink in one out of the three ways you can get a MBP to sleep.
 

mrsir2009

macrumors 604
Sep 17, 2009
7,505
156
Melbourne, Australia
So you're saying when the light does blink the computer is acting irregularly? How does that make sense? Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my understanding the sleep light has to blink to indicate that the hdds are asleep when in Sleep mode.

I know it's a minor inconvenience but I'm OCD about these things and it's really annoying to wonder why the lights don't blink in one out of the three ways you can get a MBP to sleep.

No no lol, it is normal for the sleep light to blink, but if it staying solid is not bothering you, and your computer is acting normal, it should be fine.
 

Runt888

macrumors 6502a
Nov 17, 2008
841
32
As far as I know, the computer is only sleeping when the light is blinking. The light will turn on (and not blink) when the screen turns off, to indicate that the computer is still turned on. So I would guess that it's not really sleeping until the light is blinking.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong!

Edit - I just tried this on my MackBook Pro. The screen will turn off, and the light will turn on without blinking. About a minute later, the light starts blinking.
 

superspiffy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 6, 2007
740
0
As far as I know, the computer is only sleeping when the light is blinking. The light will turn on (and not blink) when the screen turns off, to indicate that the computer is still turned on. So I would guess that it's not really sleeping until the light is blinking.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong!

Edit - I just tried this on my MackBook Pro. The screen will turn off, and the light will turn on without blinking. About a minute later, the light starts blinking.

Yea the light never starts blinking when I leave my MBP to sleep. But why???? =(
 

zacheryjensen

macrumors 6502a
May 11, 2009
801
187
Edit - I just tried this on my MackBook Pro. The screen will turn off, and the light will turn on without blinking. About a minute later, the light starts blinking.

For the curious, this delay happens because on Mac OS X, when sleep mode is entered, it does double duty. It actually writes a hibernate-like image to disk before it goes into S2R sleep mode. It does this in case that the battery or other power source goes away during sleep you can still start up wherever you left off. But in most cases you just come back from sleep quickly.

It supposedly is possible to disable this behavior and get into sleep mode much faster, though with a reboot if power is lost.
 

superspiffy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 6, 2007
740
0
I will be going to the Apple Store this afternoon for this. If anybody wants me to try something you could be saving me a trip!
 

jayhawk11

macrumors 6502a
Oct 19, 2007
775
283
i still have 13.77 gigs... I guess Apple Support is last ditch option. I rather fix it on my own as much as possible.

In other words, yes, you do have a disk space issue.

First off, seriously consider upgrading your hard drive. A 500 gig hard drive is probably under $100 (Haven't looked in a while, but check newegg.com and macsales.com)

Second, your problem is most likely related to your lack of hard drive space. As a previous poster mentioned, your MacBook Pro is designed to write a sleep image to the hard drive (in addition to memory) before turning on the blinking light. This is so if the power source (battery or adapter) is removed, the computer can still recover using the non-volatile image written to the HDD.

If you want to disable this and speed up your time to get to the blinking light, you can enter this command in Terminal:

Code:
 sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

For a little more info about safe sleep, and how to switch between the modes, read here: Safe Sleep Information
 

superspiffy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 6, 2007
740
0
In other words, yes, you do have a disk space issue.

First off, seriously consider upgrading your hard drive. A 500 gig hard drive is probably under $100 (Haven't looked in a while, but check newegg.com and macsales.com)

Second, your problem is most likely related to your lack of hard drive space. As a previous poster mentioned, your MacBook Pro is designed to write a sleep image to the hard drive (in addition to memory) before turning on the blinking light. This is so if the power source (battery or adapter) is removed, the computer can still recover using the non-volatile image written to the HDD.

If you want to disable this and speed up your time to get to the blinking light, you can enter this command in Terminal:

Code:
 sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

For a little more info about safe sleep, and how to switch between the modes, read here: Safe Sleep Information

So the Apple Genius replicated the issue by booting up to his other partitions. It doesn't seem like a software issue. Verdict? Most likely the logic board. Ouch. And here I was going about happily for 1.5 yrs thinking that my MBP is perfect.
 
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