Shut down or sleep for your Mac laptop?

Shut down or sleep for your Mac laptop?
Mac Tip #369, 28 January 2009

Black MacBook - open

My friend, though, had shut down her laptop, so it took a minute or two before she was ready to get to work. That led her to ask me: Is it OK to just ‘sleep’ a laptop, even if you’re moving it around?

The whole point about laptops is that you carry them around; they are designed for that.

The big vulnerability is the hard drive. It’s a magnetic platter (one or more) within a sealed case filled with gas. An ‘arm’ floats a few nanometres above the disc. A sudden jolt could cause that arm to touch the disc, in which case the drive wouldn’t work any more.

In recent times Mac laptops have included a sudden motion sensor to handle any sudden shocks while they’re awake and working:

The Sudden Motion Sensor is designed to detect unusually strong vibrations, sudden changes in position or accelerated movement. If the computer is dropped, the Sudden Motion Sensor instantly parks the hard drive heads to help reduce the risk of damage to the hard drive on impact.

So: if the machine is awake and working, feel free to move it around. Take some care: don’t go throwing it around, but walking around with it, sliding it gently across a desk, lifting it on or off your lap are all OK. If there is a sudden jolt, the sudden motion sensor should take care of the machine.

Meanwhile, if you want to stop working and move the laptop, for example, putting it in a bag and taking it to a new location, you need only put it to sleep, and don’t need to shut it down.

Black MacBook - closed

…wait a few seconds until the sleep indicator light starts pulsing before moving your Apple portable computer. The pulsing light indicates that the computer is fully asleep and the hard disk has stopped spinning.

Important: Moving your computer while the disk is spinning can damage the hard disk, causing loss of data or the inability to startup from the hard disk.

There’s really not much reason to actually shut down a Mac laptop these days. Keep in mind though, that even when asleep a computer will draw a little power. If you’re going to leave the machine unused for several days or weeks, that would be a good reason for shutting down.