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Million Dollar Question: sleep or shut down completely??

Sleep or Shut down?

  • Sleep

    Votes: 107 84.3%

  • Shut down

    Votes: 20 15.7%
  • Total voters
    127
Starting some time in this June till September I ran my laptop for 80 days straight without shutting down or restarting once. Still smooth as hell, as far as I can tell, though I usually don't keep it on for that long. But still, normally I never turn it off or restart it unless there's suddenly some weird bug going on or the occasional system update.
 
I think there used to be a day, where computers could not really hibernate/go into any real sleep without degrading the hardware. At this point, I think its safe to just sleep without causing any hardware issues. Some say you can run it without ever sleeping, but I don't think thats good (maybe its just me), then again you can install OSX Server onto your Macbook and use it as a server, so... maybe it is okay? To me running it 24/7 just doesn't seem like a good idea. Everyone needs their sleep, even luxurious compys, they especially should get their beauty sleep ^_^
 
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Starfyre said:
I think there used to be a day, where computers could not really hibernate/go into any real sleep without degrading the hardware. At this point, I think its safe to just sleep without causing any hardware issues. Some say you can run it without ever sleeping, but I don't think thats good (maybe its just me), then again you can install OSX Server onto your Macbook and use it as a server, so... maybe it is okay? To me running it 24/7 just doesn't seem like a good idea. Everyone needs their sleep, even luxurious compys, they especially should get their beauty sleep ^_^
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Computers don't have to sleep. That is a misnomer. Do you think that the Apple servers are put to sleep, or the servers that handle credit card processing etc?
 
They don't have to sleep, but it saves a bit of power and is trivial to do. I usually just do the hold-power-button-for-1-second trick (saves on hinge wear).
 
NYCVB said:
Yes but my understanding is that file vault isn't activated unless the machine shuts down. In other words if you just put your laptop to sleep and someone steals it, they can remove the hard drive and access it from another computer. If the machine is shut down, they can't.
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As I understand it, using FV2's GUI configuration, when sleeping, the drive remains unlocked. The key remains in memory until shutdown or hibernation. But, you'd have to remove the hardware while maintaining power to it.

[...] Users not enabled for FileVault unlock can log in to that Mac only after a FileVault 2–enabled user has unlocked the drive. Once unlocked, the drive remains unlocked and available to all users until the computer is shut down or goes into hibernation.[...]
Click to expand...
http://www.training.apple.com/pdf/WP_FileVault2.pdf. (Pg. 30)
 
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Late 2013 2.3/16GB/750M 15-inch - Always sleep for weeks on end, shut down / restart only when the need arises for driver installs or eventual system hangs / quirks that develop and need a fresh reboot to clear.

I don't do anything "special" for handling the battery either. Plug in when possible, draining cycles when too lazy to grab the power supply, whatever. 900 cycles, 85% health.
 
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Just search "MacBook sleep or shutdown" on google, the first question from official Apple support community seems professional and reasonable.
 
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Health Information:
Cycle Count: 451
Condition: Service Battery

15" MBP Early 2011, 5 years of service, never shut down unless I'm forced to (like servicing, kernel panic, ...).
 
I think my question fits best here. Probably a beginner's question for you anyway.

I read about batteries. I know that letting the capacity drop lower than 30% is painful for the battery and should be avoided. I know that sometimes it can be necessary to calibrate the battery. I guess that's true for the MBP as well?

My actual question is if I should leave it plugged in at 100% as often as possible or if I should disconnect it from the charger. I read that it depends on different factors. Could you tell me how it is with the MBP?
 
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schmidti91 said:
I think my question fits best here. Probably a beginner's question for you anyway.

I read about batteries. I know that letting the capacity drop lower than 30% is painful for the battery and should be avoided. I know that sometimes it can be necessary to calibrate the battery. I guess that's true for the MBP as well?

My actual question is if I should leave it plugged in at 100% as often as possible or if I should disconnect it from the charger. I read that it depends on different factors. Could you tell me how it is with the MBP?
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Once the battery reaches 100% charged, it will not charge anymore. There is no need to disconnect the Mac from the power source, just because the battery is 100%. It will not harm the battery leaving the Mac plugged in most of the time.
 
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Only time I ever shutdown any of my Macs is when I'm off on my annual holiday. It never even occurred to me that this was a question people ask themselves tbh.
 
I usually don't shutdown unless the system update is calling for the reboot. I had my MBP uptime for more than 6 months. I simply closed the lid when I am done using the MBP and opened the lid and go from there.
 
samuel827 said:
What is everyone doing? For those who rarely shut down, are you noticing any performance or battery issues?
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Lately I'm experiencing complete battery loss on my six year old MBP. It used to be not more than 2-3% less over night, but now it's all empty. Could be a hardware issue or an aging battery, I don't know. It's not important, because when you close the lid, an image of the RAM content is copied to the HDD. So even if the battery runs empty and can't refresh the RAM anymore, the state of the machine is preserved. Reload the battery and start the machine, instead of booting the Mac will copy the image back into memory and you can pick up work where you've left. I've even accidentally upgraded the RAM from 2x2GB to 2x4GB without shutting down and the machine woke up without problems. The whole system, hardware and software is optimized for sleeping.

So never shut down, always sleep!
 
I always shut down when I'm not going to be using the MacBook overnight or for a number of hours.

I'm using a 2010 MacBook Pro 13", bought in April of 2010.
It's still using the original battery and it still indicates 82-85% of original capacity after almost 7 years and 655 cycles

I also believe that a "fresh boot" (from shutdown) keeps things running more smoothly, but that's my opinion only.
 
rshrugged said:
As I understand it, using FV2's GUI configuration, when sleeping, the drive remains unlocked. The key remains in memory until shutdown or hibernation. But, you'd have to remove the hardware while maintaining power to it.


http://www.training.apple.com/pdf/WP_FileVault2.pdf. (Pg. 30)
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Yes, the drive never gets completely decrypted. What you could do with a sleeping mac is to open it up, freeze the ram with liquid nitrogen and transplant its RAM to some hardware that can read the encryption key for your drive. Very tricky, but techically possible. If RAM looses power in normal conditions, it instantly gets wiped and the encryption key is gone forever. By freezing the RAM this can be slowed so much that the RAM survives a few moments without power.
 
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My current MBP is almost five years old, and I think I've fully shut it down twice. I generally reboot it every few months, when it becomes necessary for one reason or another. The battery is currently at 2001 cycles, and usually lasts a couple of hours.
 
viljamip said:
Yes, the drive never gets completely decrypted. What you could do with a sleeping mac is to open it up, freeze the ram with liquid nitrogen and transplant its RAM to some hardware that can read the encryption key for your drive. Very tricky, but techically possible. If RAM looses power in normal conditions, it instantly gets wiped and the encryption key is gone forever. By freezing the RAM this can be slowed so much that the RAM survives a few moments without power.
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Actually, it's possible to retain power for more than a few moments. The original research paper on this has been removed from the Princeton site, but there's articles out there. One from that period :
http://www.zdnet.com/article/cryogenically-frozen-ram-bypasses-all-disk-encryption-methods/
 
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So to clarify - if I just shut my lid and the laptop sleeps and I have file vault installed, if someone steals my laptop and removes the hard drive, they can't access the data?
 
I always use sleep - I think I only reboot if there's an OS or security update. I like to make sure my tmux sessions stick around.

Another + for sleep - you can connect to your mac when it's sleeping if it has power connected. What's not to like?
 
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