Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Changing RAM in Deep Sleep?

H

Haptic

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 24, 2010
6
0
After seeing the dreaded beach ball far too often, I'm ready to upgrade my 2010 MBP to 8GB of RAM, but with to the amount of stuff I have open at any given time, shutting down is a bit of a mission - it took me weeks to find a suitable window to restart for the upgrade to 10.6.6!

Is it possible to replace RAM while my laptop is in Hibernate (using Deep Sleep ) without adverse consequences, or should I shut down first? i.e. is there any chance of something going wrong, or of OSX only recognising the new RAM after a hard reset?
 
You have trouble making time to reboot a computer, but no problem making time to open up the bottom of it to replace the RAM? Assuming you have time to open the package the RAM comes in, I'd recommend you also shut down the computer.
 
You should always shut down and unplug any electronics when opening them up and working on them. That includes MBP's and replacing their RAM.

I don't want to try and imagine what would happen if you tried that while turned on [asleep].

Don't forget about electrocution....

Besides that, when a computer is asleep, it keeps the RAM active and stores the state there, so if you did take it out, you'd totally hose your sleep state, and Lord knows what else.
 
Haptic said:
After seeing the dreaded beach ball far too often, I'm ready to upgrade my 2010 MBP to 8GB of RAM, but with to the amount of stuff I have open at any given time, shutting down is a bit of a mission - it took me weeks to find a suitable window to restart for the upgrade to 10.6.6!

Is it possible to replace RAM while my laptop is in Hibernate (using Deep Sleep ) without adverse consequences, or should I shut down first? i.e. is there any chance of something going wrong, or of OSX only recognising the new RAM after a hard reset?
Click to expand...

Do it! you'll be fine. just make sure that you coat your hands in water too, and stand barefoot on a metal floor. Really? Ask yourself this question. Would you change the oil on your car while it was running? If the answer to this question is also yes, then go for it, and then we can witness natural selection at it's finest.
 
Nermal said:
Deep sleep is when the RAM is copied to disk and the computer is then shut down completely.



I'm not sure that it's possible to be electrocuted by a laptop battery.
Click to expand...

Really? you let me know how that works and i'll believe you.... It's stored electricity..
 
To clarify, Deep Sleep writes the contents of RAM to the HDD, and then shuts the laptop down, so if I understand correctly, no current would be flowing. It's not the same as regular sleep!

More information on Deep Sleep/Hibernate here: http://deepsleep.free.fr/ (enough to give me reassurance that I won't be electrocuted, but nothing about whether changing RAM in Deep Sleep will cause any system instabilities)

Re: Deadwulfe's question, its not that I don't have the time to install the RAM, but that it usually takes me 30 mins to an hour to close all applications and documents in an orderly fashion so I can resume where I left off easily.
 
I inadvertently changed my ram and did the optibay mod (including switching boot drive to optibay port), while the computer was in a deep sleep.

Not surprisingly, it crashed when i tried to boot it up. One hard reboot later and it was fine.

I don't think you can avoid the reboot.
 
Haptic said:
To clarify, Deep Sleep writes the contents of RAM to the HDD, and then shuts the laptop down, so if I understand correctly, no current would be flowing. It's not the same as regular sleep!
Click to expand...

it depends on what sleep mode your machine uses. there is a deep sleep mode that still powers the RAM AND saves its contents to the hdd. pulling it out whilst doing that may cause more harm then good.

ALSO - don't forget that on wake up, the RAM probably wont be checked for upgrades, if you upgrade say, from 4GB to 8GB, the OS will still only have 4GB allocated in the registry.
 
Haptic said:
Re: Deadwulfe's question, its not that I don't have the time to install the RAM, but that it usually takes me 30 mins to an hour to close all applications and documents in an orderly fashion so I can resume where I left off easily.
Click to expand...
You've already spent that much time with this thread, so you could have done it by now. Besides, there's no way it takes 30 minutes to shut down all apps and documents "in an orderly fashion". Just select Shut Down and your Mac will do that for you, asking you if you want to save changes to any open documents. You can shut down, replace the RAM, reboot and reopen everything and be back to where you were in 30 minutes.
 
Thanks DoFoT9, Laser71 and Nermal for your helpful responses. Guess I'd better grit my teeth and prepare for shut down then!
And to the rest, thanks for the laughs.

GGJStudios: If only it were that simple. Amongst other things, I'm usually working off a lot of (very disorganized) temporary holding documents, and like to have imposed some order on the chaos before each shut down so clutter doesn't accumulate. Reloading 100mb+ of browser tabs is not cheap in this part of the world either, so there's an incentive to take the time to reduce open tabs to the essential before restarting.
 
Haptic said:
GGJStudios: If only it were that simple. Amongst other things, I'm usually working off a lot of (very disorganized) temporary holding documents, and like to have imposed some order on the chaos before each shut down so clutter doesn't accumulate.
Click to expand...
If you've modified any docs, you'll have an opportunity to save changes before shutting down. Also, you can easily open recent files from most apps.
Haptic said:
Reloading 100mb+ of browser tabs is not cheap in this part of the world either, so there's an incentive to take the time to reduce open tabs to the essential before restarting.
Click to expand...
You can always select "Add Bookmark for These xxx Tabs" with a click of the mouse. You can also "Reopen All Windows from Last Session", if desired. There are very quick ways to save where you were and shut down in just a few minutes. 10.7 Lion will make this even easier with its Resume feature. Until then, you can probably find and use an app like Relaunch.
 
Last edited:
GGJstudios said:
You can always select "Add Bookmark for These xxx Tabs" with a click of the mouse. You can also "Reopen All Windows from Last Session", if desired. There are very quick ways to save where you were and shut down in just a few minutes. 10.7 Lion will make this even easier with its Resume feature. Until then, you can probably find and use an app like Relaunch.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing he lives in a country where broadband bandwidth limits are low and overage charges high. Australia perhaps?

But yeah, OP, you really should just make the time to do this properly. You may also want to see about organising your workflow a bit more so that a kernel panic won't wreck your day ;)
 
/user/me said:
Really? you let me know how that works and i'll believe you.... It's stored electricity..
Click to expand...

Yes, but the voltage isn't high enough to generally cause a problem. This is why car batteries are 12V (the same as your laptop battery, at least in mbp's), versus a higher voltage. Yes you can still get a "tingle" if you lick the leads, but just touching your skin isn't going to do anything.
 
DoFoT9 said:
it depends on what sleep mode your machine uses. there is a deep sleep mode that still powers the RAM AND saves its contents to the hdd. pulling it out whilst doing that may cause more harm then good.

ALSO - don't forget that on wake up, the RAM probably wont be checked for upgrades, if you upgrade say, from 4GB to 8GB, the OS will still only have 4GB allocated in the registry.
Click to expand...
My guess is that it would cause a kernel panic. I would definitely shut down, replace and reboot. Do it properly OP.
 
lpmusix said:
Yes, but the voltage isn't high enough to generally cause a problem. This is why car batteries are 12V (the same as your laptop battery, at least in mbp's), versus a higher voltage. Yes you can still get a "tingle" if you lick the leads, but just touching your skin isn't going to do anything.
Click to expand...

Voltage is the least of your worries, it is amperage that kills, and a car battery has more than enough to fry someone many times over, not to mention it is DC which burns more severely and deeper than AC.
 
Last edited:
I wouldn't recommend that anyone so this, but I have changed it out when in deep sleep (wasn't thinking and paying attention to what I was doing, and was terrified that I had shorted something possibly when I realized what I had done). I had properly grounded myself before starting to alleviate static discharge issues and nothing bad happened. I am still using it error free to this day (after several years). Once again, I would NOT recommend doing this to anyone.
 
Haptic said:
Thanks DoFoT9, Laser71 and Nermal for your helpful responses. Guess I'd better grit my teeth and prepare for shut down then!
And to the rest, thanks for the laughs.

GGJStudios: If only it were that simple. Amongst other things, I'm usually working off a lot of (very disorganized) temporary holding documents, and like to have imposed some order on the chaos before each shut down so clutter doesn't accumulate. Reloading 100mb+ of browser tabs is not cheap in this part of the world either, so there's an incentive to take the time to reduce open tabs to the essential before restarting.
Click to expand...

well, today's the day for you to get organized and save your stuff every now and then...

what are you gonna do if your system unexpectedly crashes? (it happens)
 
SandboxGeneral said:
You should always shut down and unplug any electronics when opening them up and working on them. That includes MBP's and replacing their RAM.
Click to expand...
Wrong.
You should always have your computer connected to the wall when replacing parts reason is that you may have noticed some wall plugs have 2 prongs but computers always have 3 the reason is the third one is the earth so if you disconnect the earth then the static in the case cant discharge and you can fry your motherboard. That does however cover computers with three prongs most laptops dont have three prong connects (including the MBP) so for the MBP you should touch a piece of steel in the case before doing anything else to make sure you discharge the static, it is also a good idea to leave the computer for say 5 minutes to allow the capacitors to discharge. This of course just a precautionary measure to make sure you dont break your 1K plus laptop.
 
That's probably the strangest thing I've ever heard. You should earth yourself by touching something metal.
 
Haptic said:
After seeing the dreaded beach ball far too often, I'm ready to upgrade my 2010 MBP to 8GB of RAM, but with to the amount of stuff I have open at any given time, shutting down is a bit of a mission - it took me weeks to find a suitable window to restart for the upgrade to 10.6.6!

Is it possible to replace RAM while my laptop is in Hibernate (using Deep Sleep ) without adverse consequences, or should I shut down first? i.e. is there any chance of something going wrong, or of OSX only recognising the new RAM after a hard reset?
Click to expand...

i have to ask this question..

what all are you running? like i can even imagine running so much stuf that you cant shut your computer down!!
 
don't take it bad but, if you need 30 minutes to close everything, you should reconsider your entire workflow. the key of a well-done (and fast) job is order.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back