I've been wondering this for a long time. I like to wait until the thing actually sleeps before I start tossing it around, in order to prevent damage to the spinning hard drive. But it takes anywhere from 90 seconds to 2 minutes after closing the lid for the light to start pulsing. It seems all of my Apple laptops have done this. Why don't they just sleep almost immediately after closing the lid? What is it doing?? Is there anyway to speed up this process?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Why do Apple laptops take so long to sleep??
- Thread starter macizcool
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
So you figure that after the computer is asleep it's OK to toss it around!?
Interesting ....
Within reason...
The computer has to save the contents of the RAM to the HDD in case something happens (e.g dead battery). More RAM = longer time. My late 08 takes 5 minutes or more if I'm using all my ram. Of course, there are ways to turn this "feature" off if you would prefer, but if your battery died when in sleep everything you were working on would be gone. Ill try to find you links tomorrow but I'm semi-computer less ATM and am posting mostly from my phone.
Last edited:
I didn't realize Macbook Pros did that? Isn't that the hibernation mode?
I used to have a 2006 MacBook with 10.5 and 2GB of memory... Even that took forever to go to sleep.
Here is a brief explanation straight from Apple themselves: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11096
Hope it helps.
Hope it helps.
I don't have any problems like that on my Apple Laptop. In fact it has the lowest sleep times I've ever seen.
U mad bout my PCIe speeds??
U mad bout my PCIe speeds??
Something isn't right, standard sleep keeps power to the ram and should only take a few seconds - in and out. This is a key Mac advantage.
On a modern MB, deep sleep should only kick in when the battery gets low and the machine offloads the ram before it is lost. You can see this has happened when you can't wake it back up without the power key, which gets you a set of progress dots across the bottom center, showing the ram getting reloaded.
On a modern MB, deep sleep should only kick in when the battery gets low and the machine offloads the ram before it is lost. You can see this has happened when you can't wake it back up without the power key, which gets you a set of progress dots across the bottom center, showing the ram getting reloaded.
And you wouldn't even care if it's still writing RAM bytes to disk while you start tossing it around. G-forces don't bother SSDs.
I'm running lion on all my machines ATM, FYI.
A hard drive can only write data so fast, 8, even 4 gb can take a few minutes to save to the disk. A SSD is much faster at writing data than a normal hard drive (6-10x faster I think, depending on model). Faster writing would take less time to copy the data, and the Mac would sleep faster. This is also why SSD machines boot in seconds, because they can read the data much faster than a HDD.
Even with an SSD I found putting my MBP to sleep was still taking a few moments more than I liked. I decided to just disable the writing of RAM to disk completely by deleting the sleepimage and disabling it, so that the RAM never gets written to disk, and this makes my MBP sleep and wake instantly now. This is also good for SSDs as you then aren't writing data to the disk at every sleep. Though it should be noted that if your laptop runs out of power while asleep, anything that was open and unsaved would be lost, but honestly how often does that ever happen.
I may have to try this... Apparently Lion has this safe sleep, too. Does it only save data if your computer runs out of battery, or if it crashes while sleeping? Doesn't seem like it would be common for a laptop to completely run out of power without the user realizing it.
I honestly don't really need it, I don't make a habit of keeping unsaved documents open when putting the computer to sleep.
It's fun 'cuz my rMBP immediately turns off when closed the lid. It's super fast. BTW, if you're using SSD, that tossing thing won't bother.
I'm not running SSD.
I turned off the safe sleep and I'm now down to 20 seconds from closed lid to actual sleep. I still wish it was a little faster, but it's an improvement.
20 sec sounds far to long since you turned off the safe sleep...
how did you do that exactly?
"In terminal...type pmset -g
to see the parameters in effect at present, and post those results here.
set the sleep mode to zero:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
Remove the image:
sudo rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage
Create a blanked file:
sudo touch /private/var/vm/sleepimage
Make file immutable:
sudo chflags uchg /private/var/vm/sleepimage"
If pmset -g shows: autopoweroff**1,
disable this automatic hibernation mode (happens even if hibernation mode is set to 0 on the new Mac mini 2012 and iMac, and MBP 2012?)
sudo pmset -a autopoweroff 0
Set the safe sleep timer (standbydelay) to 20 hours, default is 4200
sudo pmset -a standbydelay 72000
5. sudo pmset -a standby 0
... bit 3 of hibernatemode encourages the dynamic pager to page out inactive pages prior to hibernation. So this appears to be why swap can used after sleeping (even though hibernatemode is 0, so bit 3 is off). Disable this new, possibly buggy behavior by switching off standby:
sudo pmset -a standby 0
It shouldn't crash when sleeping. It powers down the RAM, and spins down the HDD during sleep. I think the only thing that runs is a little program to tell when you open the computer or move the mouse so it knows when to wake up again.
You'd be suprised though, about running out of power without realizing it. Three or four times I'd take my computer to school, put it to sleep, come home and it was absolutely dead (from 50% battery). Don't think I had anything unsaved, but keeping my current tabs open was great!
Okay obviously safe sleep (hibernate) is on. My windows computer takes anywhere from 1-12 seconds to go into "sleep" mode. Hibernate (safe sleep) takes anywhere from 25-90 seconds. And my computer is 4 years old, has 4GB ram and a HDD
----------
That should only happen if you left it in the car during the day (where it gets really hot - that's also bad for your battery).
On the same computer (stated above) I will only lose ~15% battery from a 6-7 hour laps while in "sleep" (not hibernate - hibernate i lose 1-2%).
----------
That should only happen if you left it in the car during the day (where it gets really hot - that's also bad for your battery).
On the same computer (stated above) I will only lose ~15% battery from a 6-7 hour laps while in "sleep" (not hibernate - hibernate i lose 1-2%).