Does putting a laptop into standby mode protect the hard drive as much as doing a full shutdown? I carry my laptop around with me (often not in its protective laptop case even) and want to know if, to protect the hard drive, I need to do a full shutdown between moves or if standby mode is just as safe?
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Standby is fine. When you go into standby, everything that is in memory is written to the hard drive. A significant number of laptop users almost never shutdown their laptop.
This was first published in February 2005