Can suspension look like hibernation?

Computer Hardware
#1

I’m trying to avoid hibernation and I believe I’ve got it. My last manouver has been “powercfg.exe /hibernate off” that has got to delete C:\hiberfil.sys . According to some MS page, it’s impossible to hibernate w/o this file.

But, after 30 minutes of inactivity, my Windows 10 (or modern) computer seems to turn off (the fans and the power led go off). If I move the mouse, it goes on, asks for credentials and shows the desktop as I left it. The same as my Windows 7 (or ancient) computer with more ancient hardware, except that this one looks on while suspended, with the fans running and the power led blinking.

In the modern computer (giving for sure that it isn’t hibernating now as it hasn’t got C:\hiberfil.sys, the alternative is too twisted lol), you cannot tell suspensions from hibernations (hybrid hibernation is disabled too, I had disabled it manually beforewards, and Windows told it was disabling it when I run “powercfg.exe /hibernate off”).

Some users like me are searching how to avoid hibernations that we think are happening despite our settings against, because suspensions look like hibernations with our more capable hardware. Am I right assuming this?

#2

Hibernation is suspend to disk, there is suspend to RAM as well.
You can try and disable the sleep mode in energy options in Windows system control panel.

#3

My main reason against hibernation is its disk usage, and I also dislike that the computer doesn’t restart fresh. Suspension (or sleeping) is to save energy and computer usage when it’s unattended inside a session. My understanding is that my modern computer can suspend to RAM and feed it w/o keeping itself on, unlike my ancient computer that needs to remain on.

#4

Well, it turns out that my ancient computer was configured in the BIOS to suspend to S1 instead of S3, a typical setting in that age (2009, AMD AM3 790FX and Phenom II x4 3.2 GHz), possibly because there was a lot of software not quite prepared for S3, possibly Windows XP. Once put to S3, it suspends to RAM and seems to turn off the same as the “modern” computer (2013, AMD AM3+ 970 and FX8350 x8 4GHz, acquired recently, this BIOS doesn’t have a S1/S3 setting).