Pausing Windows 8

When you leave your Windows 8 computer there are a number of ways of sending it to the land of nod. They differ in what is remembered on resumption, and in how long the machine takes to stop and start. So which should you choose? I did some experiments, the results of which have led me to a faster and better option than the Windows default.

(Updated 20-Feb-2013 with more experiments in Sleep and Hybrid Sleep)

Sleep

Turn off time: 2 seconds
Turn on time: 4 seconds
Survives power outage: no
Resumes open applications: yes
Note: this and hybrid sleep (without power outage) are the only options which do not need to run through the POST when resuming, which is the activity occurring from when you press the power button until a beep is emitted. This takes 13 seconds on my PC, but is substantially shorter on newer computers with UEFI.

Hibernate

Manual initiation: shutdown /h
Turn off time: 20 seconds
Turn on time: 30 seconds
Survives power outage: yes
Resumes open applications: yes
Technical description: saves RAM contents to disk. On resuming loads from disk back to RAM.

Hybrid Sleep

Turn off time: 12 seconds
Turn on time: 4 seconds (without power outage) / 30 seconds (after power outage)
Survives power outage: yes
Resumes open applications: yes
Note: this combines the speed of Sleep with the safety of Hibernate. If power to the PC is maintained then it can resume promptly from Sleep, but if power is cut then status is loaded from disk. The latter case is a bit slower, but either way you get back to all your previously open applications. I don't know why it's faster to turn off than hibernate, when it seems it should be doing very similar operations.

Hybrid shutdown / fast startup

Manual initiation: shutdown /s /hybrid /t 0
Turn off time: 20 seconds
Turn on time: 36 seconds
Survives power outage: yes
Resumes open applications: no

Technical description: saves essential Windows system data to disk. Uses this saved data to resume faster. Microsoft has a full description of this technique which is new to Windows 8.

Note: This is the default shutdown option in Windows 8. It is effectively a much faster version of a full shutdown.

Shutdown

Manual initiation: shutdown /s
Turn off time: 36 seconds
Turn on time: 92 seconds
Survives power outage: yes
Resumes open applications: no

Note: This is the old-fashioned full shutdown.

When I leave my computer during the day I usually send it to sleep, so that I can resume what I was doing promptly. Overnight I like to turn off all power to the computer, so I choose to hibernate. Even though I don't often leave programs running overnight, hibernating is the fastest option, and it returns me to the desktop rather than the Start Screen, which I find helpful.

The timings will vary enormously for different computers, especially if you have an SSD. I recommend measuring the time taken for the different options yourself, and choosing based on that data.