I'm wondering about whether its safe to carry around/move my macbook pro when it's sleeping, or whether its safer to shut it down? Does it make a difference? Please enlighten me someone.
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Is it safe to carry around/move a macbook pro whilst sleeping?
- Thread starter equalsabracket
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I carry my MBP all around campus in my backpack while it sleeps, and I have had absolutely no problems doing it. The main reason you don't want to move it around while it's "active" is that the hard drive heads are moving around continuously, and sudden changes in direction can throw them off and possibly break them.
While your machine is sleeping, however, the hard drive has "parked" the heads, thus they are not moving and it is perfectly safe to move it around at whatever level you are comfortable doing so.
While your machine is sleeping, however, the hard drive has "parked" the heads, thus they are not moving and it is perfectly safe to move it around at whatever level you are comfortable doing so.
It's safe. There are other factors to take into account. If the Mac is awakened during travels, depending on the case/bag, it could gt hot until it goes back to sleep due to poor ventilation. I would also take into account how long the travel time is.
Depending on where I'm going I will leave it in sleep mode or shut it down. I have a Brenthaven (sp?) bag and I haven't had any issues with my MBP getting hot. Occasionally I will see the Apple logo light up - YMMV.
Leaving it in Sleep Mode will drain the battery faster than turning it off (obviously), that's why it is important to determine travel time.
Depending on where I'm going I will leave it in sleep mode or shut it down. I have a Brenthaven (sp?) bag and I haven't had any issues with my MBP getting hot. Occasionally I will see the Apple logo light up - YMMV.
Leaving it in Sleep Mode will drain the battery faster than turning it off (obviously), that's why it is important to determine travel time.
The safest bet for this would be to put the notebook in hibernation. But, alas, it seems that Mac OS X does not have such an option - Windows and Linux do.
The difference between a sleep mode and hibernation is that the system copies the entire RAM to the hard disk before it shuts off and the next time you turn the computer on, it resumes where you left it.
It does not require a battery buffer like the sleep mode does and resuming from hibernation is always faster than a fresh reboot and restoring your work environment. Also, a computer in hibernation can not accidentally wake up and its hard drive definitely remains in the parking position.
But, well, I don't such a menu anywhere in Snow Leopard so it seems that Apple has not implemented that feature. This feature is useful when you are not just moving your computer from one office to another but have to take it on a slightly longer travel, let's say from home to work or on a plane. I know many folks who never shut down their notebooks but use hibernation exclusively.
i read the title and thought you were sleepwalking with your MBP
Glad I'm not the only one who thought that.
But yea, as everyone else said, it should be perfectly safe to move with it while its sleeping, provided it's not in a position where it'd be liable to wake itself up in transit.
Hibernation can be achieved by modifying the sleep state in terminal.
Alternatively, download the DeepSleep widget which allows you to hibernate from Dashboard
i read the title and thought you were sleepwalking with your MBP
This made me laugh so much! Can see how you got that from the title
I always put my MBP to sleep, its had 45 days of uptime so far, i always have the charger so if it goes into deep sleep i reconnect and turn it back on, never had any issues with it turning on randomly or anything either.