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hakstooy · Mar 21, 2006, 10:04 AM

I just got back from my first trip with the MBP and this was the first time I was frequently carrying the MBP around while using it, at the airport, the hotel, etc. The lag between the time you close the lid and the MBP goes to sleep is MADDENING. It takes 20-30 seconds before the the harddrive stops spinning and I can pick it up and move along. I just sit there trying to hear the HDD or discern whether the sleep light is blinking, which, if you are in a bright, loud place, is no easy task.

I have become very used to closing my PB's and within a second or two being off, now I have to sit and wait an amount of time that is nearly equivalent to shutting the freaking thing down. This isn't really an issue when using the MBP on a desktop, but for on the go use, it is quite irritating.

To me, this delay is NOT worth the wait every time I want to sleep, nor is worth the 2 GBs of HDD space I am forced to sacrifice. I wonder if the software controlling this could be rewritten to only use safe sleep when there is a certain amount of battery life left, or if there could be a preference to turn it off.

Does anyone have any experience with the last PB's that also had safe sleep? Did they take a similarly long time to sleep?

Is anyone else bothered by this?

chabig · Mar 21, 2006, 10:17 AM

You don't have to wait for it. Just close the lid, put it away, and go about your business. The machine will be fine unless you're playing frisbee with it.

Chris

hakstooy · Mar 21, 2006, 10:25 AM

Heh, I actually just found a terminal command that disables safe sleep.

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

So, not too difficult. Still, a syspref woulda been nice.

Chris, what the machine is doing between the time you close the lid and the light starts pulsing is writing the RAM to the HDD, that certainly doesn't sound like a good time to go moving it around. Maybe SMS protects it, but unless I hear something from Apple, I'm not risking my data.

chabig · Mar 21, 2006, 11:16 AM

Originally Posted by hakstooy

Chris, what the machine is doing between the time you close the lid and the light starts pulsing is writing the RAM to the HDD, that certainly doesn't sound like a good time to go moving it around. Maybe SMS protects it, but unless I hear something from Apple, I'm not risking my data.

If you're concerned about risking your data, you shouldn't be turning safe sleep off.

That said, the hard drive can be moved without damage. It just can't be banged around. Think about the devices that have hard drives--iPods (you can run with them), tablet PCs, cameras, etc.

Chris

andgarden · Mar 21, 2006, 01:55 PM

Originally Posted by chabig

If you're concerned about risking your data, you shouldn't be turning safe sleep off.

That said, the hard drive can be moved without damage. It just can't be banged around. Think about the devices that have hard drives--iPods (you can run with them), tablet PCs, cameras, etc.

Chris

Would I be wrong in guessing that you've never had a catastrophic HD failure?

chabig · Mar 21, 2006, 06:57 PM

Originally Posted by andgarden

Would I be wrong in guessing that you've never had a catastrophic HD failure?

I've had them fail on desktops, but not on any of my laptops. But my point was that if he's concerned about his data, he should be using Safe Sleep, not turning it off.

Chris

mrmister · Mar 21, 2006, 07:05 PM

But if you even remotely know how much battery life you have, Safe Sleep isn't all that necessary, is it? It seems to me that under normal conditions one can live pretty safely without it.

andgarden · Mar 21, 2006, 07:08 PM

Originally Posted by mrmister

But if you even remotely know how much battery life you have, Safe Sleep isn't all that necessary, is it? It seems to me that under normal conditions one can live pretty safely without it.

I agree with this completely.

hakstooy · Mar 21, 2006, 07:20 PM

I don't put my computer to sleep without saving any important data. I really don't understand why anyone would.

What I meant about risking my data was moving the laptop around while it was writing, because I can think of less stressful ways to use it. I would imagine an easy way to corrupt data is to move the drive around when its actually writing.

I also agree that safe sleep is unnecessary, and consequently it will remain disabled on my MBP. What is unfortunate is all that gains me is the quick sleep, I still don't get back the 2 GBs of HDD space dedicated to it.

mrmister · Mar 21, 2006, 07:23 PM

"I also agree that safe sleep is unnecessary, and consequently it will remain disabled on my MBP. What is unfortunate is all that gains me is the quick sleep, I still don't get back the 2 GBs of HDD space dedicated to it."

Really? That *is* lame.

chabig · Mar 21, 2006, 07:46 PM

Is that true? You don't get the disk space back?

Chris

By the way, MicroCenter is selling 120GB notebook hard drives for $140 this week.

venom600 · Mar 21, 2006, 08:14 PM

Are the drives SATA? If not, we can't use them.

chabig · 08:28 PM

Good question. They're parallel IDA, I think.

Chris

hakstooy · Mar 21, 2006, 11:06 PM

Nope, you don't get it back. 18.75 free before, 18.75 after.

I think the command just changes the setting in the system software that runs when you initiate sleep. I don't think it actually disables the whole shebang. It kinda makes sense, whatever partition or however its defined is likely set by the system, and so can not be reassigned since I could always turn Safe Sleep back on.

Tomchu · Mar 21, 2006, 11:54 PM

Once you disable Safe Sleep, just delete /var/vm/sleepimage. You get your 2 GB back. OS X re-creates it if it needs Safe Sleep again.

mrmister · Mar 21, 2006, 11:59 PM

Thanks for the info, Tomchu--that makes sense.

inkhead · Mar 22, 2006, 01:30 AM

If you've had a catastrophic hard disk failure, you shouldn't be doing stupid things like disabling safe sleep, you should be investing in an external drive to backup your data regularly. You can either use Backup 3 from Apple to automatically do it daily, weekly, or if you don't have a .mac account you can use iBackup to do exactly the same thing.

Stop worrying about the computer sleeping. Your powerbook has sensors to lock the drive heads in place.

Connect your computer to an external hard drive once a week, and let an automated backup save your important data.

Originally Posted by andgarden

Would I be wrong in guessing that you've never had a catastrophic HD failure?

inkhead · Mar 22, 2006, 01:43 AM

fyi, mine takes about 5 seconds. 1.83, 2gb RAM (you might have bad ram)

hakstooy · 09:38 AM

Tomchu: nice info! Thanks!

inkhead: What does safe sleep have to do with a hard disk failure?

I do back up my hard drive regularly, that has nothing to do with safe sleep nor why I don't need/want it. I suppose I just use my computer differently than some but I tend to save frequently when working on important files and I certainly save everything before I put the computer to sleep or let the battery run out.

For some people safe sleep might be useful, its not to me. There is nothing "stupid" about disabling a feature you don't need.

(What is somewhat stupid is your connection between safe sleep and hard drive failures. How exactly does a system wherein my active data is recorded to HDD help me when that drive fails? Especially given that part of my motivation for doing so is to prevent any undue strain on the HDD caused by movement after initiating sleep.)

John123 · Mar 22, 2006, 12:33 PM

I too hate the safe sleep. And thanks to your Terminal command, I too have disabled it.

andgarden · Mar 22, 2006, 02:46 PM

Originally Posted by hakstooy

Tomchu: nice info! Thanks!

inkhead: What does safe sleep have to do with a hard disk failure?

I do back up my hard drive regularly, that has nothing to do with safe sleep nor why I don't need/want it. I suppose I just use my computer differently than some but I tend to save frequently when working on important files and I certainly save everything before I put the computer to sleep or let the battery run out.

For some people safe sleep might be useful, its not to me. There is nothing "stupid" about disabling a feature you don't need.

(What is somewhat stupid is your connection between safe sleep and hard drive failures. How exactly does a system wherein my active data is recorded to HDD help me when that drive fails? Especially given that part of my motivation for doing so is to prevent any undue strain on the HDD caused by movement after initiating sleep.)

Tomchu · Mar 22, 2006, 02:59 PM

Some people here are obviously misinformed as to what Safe Sleep does, and how it's different from regular sleep.

If you have a hard drive failure, you are FSCKED whether or not you use Safe Sleep. The "Safe" in "Safe Sleep" refers to whether your computer will remain in a resumable state when/if your main battery and 3-minute-long backup battery are completely drained. Sheesh.

PurpleRabbit73 · Mar 22, 2006, 03:27 PM

Originally Posted by inkhead

fyi, mine takes about 5 seconds. 1.83, 2gb RAM (you might have bad ram)

Can anyone back this up, maybe someone with 1GB or 512GB of RAM?? (that RAM is the reason for sleep delay??)

hakstooy · Mar 22, 2006, 06:33 PM

I have 2GB of RAM and it takes 20-30 seconds. It never came anywhere near 5 seconds. If it did, I wouldn't have an issue with the time.

John123 · Mar 22, 2006, 07:38 PM

Originally Posted by PurpleRabbit73

Can anyone back this up, maybe someone with 1GB or 512GB of RAM?? (that RAM is the reason for sleep delay??)

It's not the amount of your RAM but rather the amount. Look at top (or Activity Monitor if you prefer a GUI) and see how much you're using.

Daniel Bayer · Mar 23, 2006, 05:17 AM

It is pretty irritating to me. Maybe I will disable it too.....after I do an extensive hardware test to see if I have bad ram or bad something.

4 times now, I have had the computer totally lock up on wakeup. This morning, I opened it up and a whole mosaic of yellow blotches covered the screen in a diagonal pattern, then the middle one inch of the screen went corrupt and the thing froze. I could move the curser, but that was it.

I have to say I am not too happy about this purchase as time goes by. My keyboard looks like crap as the keys are uneven, the track-pad is not even, the back of the lower case bows outward on the bottom to the point that the middle is even with the rubber pads and touches the surface of my desk. The DVD sounds like crap as it makes all kinds of weird noises putting disks in and out. Some CD's get stuck if they have a really shiny top surface causing me to need to do the re-boot and hold down track pad thing to get it out. I used to get all kinds of options as far as disk burning speed goes. Now it just gives me two...and that is it.

I guess I got bit by the early adopters bug. I have had two other 1st run machines and have not had this problem.

Otherwise this is a great machine.

The closest Apple store is 200 miles away over 3 11,000 foot mountain passes. Maybe for my trouble, they will let me do an upgrade to a 2.16 for no additional charge.....

Big Mac · Mar 23, 2006, 06:07 AM

Sounds like all the benefits of having Intel Inside.

arfung · Mar 23, 2006, 07:45 AM

I was thinking about turning off safe sleep, but I changed my mind. I think that Apple has removed the backup battery in the MBPs. So, yesterday I put the computer to sleep, changed batteries, and then woke the machine up. It had to load the RAM from the drive (first time ever), which took about 5-10 seconds. From this, I gather that there is no more backup battery. For those who don't know, all previous powerbooks had a backup battery that preserved the contents of RAM even when the main battery was removed for a short time (in order to, for example, change batteries).

jamil5454 · 08:18 AM

Imagine this...

You've got SMS and Safe Sleep. You close your laptop and immediately put it in your laptop bad, bumping it slightly. SMS kicks in and parks the hard drive to prevent permanent damage, but now the contents of your memory are lost. So you're kind of back where you started, similar to a situation where you didn't have Safe Sleep and your laptop ran out of battery power while sleeping.

In theory Safe Sleep is a fantabulous idea. In practice, the fragility of hard drives sort of gets in the way. When solid state hard drives come into play Safe Sleep will work flawlessly.

JKT · Mar 23, 2006, 08:27 AM

...or a back up battery is still present, but the machines are designed to use Safe Sleep so they do, regardless of whether it is there or not.

You could test it by disabling safe sleep and then doing a battery swap - does it work or not. If not, then I guess you are right

dec · Mar 23, 2006, 11:07 AM

This should have been a reply to daniel bayer:
"4 times now, I have had the computer totally lock up on wakeup. This morning, I opened it up and a whole mosaic of yellow blotches covered the screen in a diagonal pattern, then the middle one inch of the screen went corrupt and the thing froze. I could move the curser, but that was it."

sounds like you have the same problem i had, i sent mine back, currently waitign for a replacement. I have another thread here titled osx lockup

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=288402

WOPR · Mar 23, 2006, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Sounds like all the benefits of having Intel Inside.

You're getting really really really boring now.

Tomchu · Mar 23, 2006, 02:32 PM

I don't understand this train of logic:

Originally Posted by jamil5454

SMS kicks in and parks the hard drive to prevent permanent damage, but now the contents of your memory are lost.

Huh? How do you see that?

SMS only kicks in and parks the head for the moments that it detects sudden motion/free fall. Once that motion goes away, the hard drive unparks and begins operating again. If you don't believe me, start a copy in the Finder, and let the laptop freefall just slightly while you've got your hands around it. Decelerate it on your own gently. Notice how it clicks when it parks, then goes back to work almost right away?

Homer1946 · Mar 24, 2006, 06:00 PM

Originally Posted by inkhead

If you've had a catastrophic hard disk failure, you shouldn't be doing stupid things like disabling safe sleep, you should be investing in an external drive to backup your data regularly. You can either use Backup 3 from Apple to automatically do it daily, weekly, or if you don't have a .mac account you can use iBackup to do exactly the same thing.

Stop worrying about the computer sleeping. Your powerbook has sensors to lock the drive heads in place.

Connect your computer to an external hard drive once a week, and let an automated backup save your important data.

Ignoring the obviously hostile nature of the post.

Hibernation is a relatively new feature, and one that until recently we have been living without just fine. Although I would probably leave it enabled for MY use, I do not see why it is "stupid" for someone else to disable it for THEIR use if they prefer it that way. (Obviously, and as pointed out, holding up hibernation as a safeguard against hard drive failure makes NO sense.)

slffl · Mar 25, 2006, 05:18 PM

I was not a fan of safesleep on the MBP. I have been using a 17" 1ghz for 3 years now and not once did my computer fail while in sleep. And I always save what I need to before putting it to sleep.

SEkker · Mar 26, 2006, 02:09 AM

An interesting use of 2 GB HD. I was wondering where the space went when I upgraded from my revA PB17.

I can certainly see why someone would want to disable this feature.

TheBum · Mar 26, 2006, 10:44 AM

Originally Posted by arfung

For those who don't know, all previous powerbooks had a backup battery that preserved the contents of RAM even when the main battery was removed for a short time (in order to, for example, change batteries).

Not *all*. The 12" aluminum PowerBook has never had a backup battery.

Star-Fire · Mar 26, 2006, 12:45 PM

Ok I've disabled, but what is the command to turn safe sleep back on if I would like to use it again?

Thanks

Wiskedjak · Mar 26, 2006, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Some people here are obviously misinformed as to what Safe Sleep does, and how it's different from regular sleep.

If you have a hard drive failure, you are FSCKED whether or not you use Safe Sleep. The "Safe" in "Safe Sleep" refers to whether your computer will remain in a resumable state when/if your main battery and 3-minute-long backup battery are completely drained. Sheesh.

Basically, Safe Sleep is what Windows calls Hibernation.

Mithras · Mar 26, 2006, 02:55 PM

Originally Posted by Star-Fire

Ok I've disabled, but what is the command to turn safe sleep back on if I would like to use it again?

Thanks

replace the 0 with a 1.

Homer1946 · Mar 26, 2006, 02:55 PM

Originally Posted by Star-Fire

Ok I've disabled, but what is the command to turn safe sleep back on if I would like to use it again?

Thanks

Just reverse the prior command.

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1

amazing · Mar 26, 2006, 07:41 PM

question: am I right in thinking that a restart reactivates safe sleep? and that disabling safe sleep does not recuperate the approximate 2 GB HD space?

hakstooy · Mar 26, 2006, 08:59 PM

No, that command disables safe sleep until you change it. And if you delete the sleepimage file that Tomchu specified you gain back the hard drive space until you reactivate safe sleep.

amazing · Mar 26, 2006, 10:38 PM

Originally Posted by hakstooy

No, that command disables safe sleep until you change it. And if you delete the sleepimage file that Tomchu specified you gain back the hard drive space until you reactivate safe sleep.

thanks a bunch for clarifying that! just for future reference, where's the safe sleep image stored?

Barefoot Matt · Mar 26, 2006, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by amazing

thanks a bunch for clarifying that! just for future reference, where's the safe sleep image stored?

As was previously mentioned in this thread:

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Once you disable Safe Sleep, just delete /var/vm/sleepimage. You get your 2 GB back. OS X re-creates it if it needs Safe Sleep again.

Star-Fire · Mar 27, 2006, 04:07 AM

Originally Posted by Homer1946

Just reverse the prior command.

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1

Just tried it, dosen't work, had to restart after removing battery.

hakstooy · Mar 27, 2006, 11:32 AM

You might need to restart the computer first, I don't know.

24klogos · Mar 27, 2006, 01:14 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Sounds like all the benefits of having Intel Inside.

BigMac, u got that right.

JKT · Mar 27, 2006, 05:21 PM

Originally Posted by 24klogos

BigMac, u got that right.

Yes, especially as it was introduced with the last PowerBook G4

mduell · Mar 28, 2006, 01:25 AM

Originally Posted by hakstooy

Chris, what the machine is doing between the time you close the lid and the light starts pulsing is writing the RAM to the HDD, that certainly doesn't sound like a good time to go moving it around. Maybe SMS protects it, but unless I hear something from Apple, I'm not risking my data.

The drives are rated for about 160G shock while operating. You would have to be incredibly abusive to exceed that. Even dropping it on a hard surface may not create a 160G acceleration.