What's the Difference Between Standby and Hibernate?

Answer 1:--In Standby mode, power is saved by shutting down the hard drives, fans and monitors. These are high power consumption devices. The computer still uses power to save the data in memory, so you can restart very quickly (however, if power goes off while in this state, the data in memory will be lost).

In Hibernate mode, XP saves the data in memory to the hard disk. Then the power is cut off completely, so this preserves more battery life. When you restart, it takes a little longer because the data saved on the disk must be restored to memory. Of course, this method uses disk space to store the memory data.

HOW TOENABLE THESE OPTIONS:-If you're using the XP theme view, you might not see the Hibernate option when you select to shut down the computer. First try holding down the Shift key to cause the Standby key to change to Hibernate. If that doesn't work, hibernation might not be enabled. Go to Control Panel Performance and Maintenance Power Options (or just Power Options in classic view). On the Hibernation tab, check the box that says Enable hibernation and click OK.



Answer 2 :--Hibernate and Standby are two different sleep options that Windows XP offers. Hibernate saves an image of your desktop, including all open windows and files. Then it powers down your computer just as if you had turned it off. When you turn your computer on again, your windows and files are open just as you left them.
Standby is a more traditional sleep mode, as it reduces the power your computer uses to almost nothing. When you select Standby, the power to your screen, hard drive, and peripheral devices is cut. However, the power to the computer's memory (RAM) is maintained so your open files stay open.