We have a laptop that is plugged in all the time when it’s at home. Is the best method for routine backups of this laptop simply to disable sleep|hibernate?
Other (desktop) computers are backed up in the middle of the night. All our desktops and the laptop run 24x7, but the laptop will go to sleep in it’s current configuration. Network is unavailable on the laptop during sleep or hibernation, so obviously it won’t back up during those times. There is no time of day where I can guarantee that the laptop will be in use and thus not sleeping. Laptop usage is daily, but time of usage and length of usage is random.
I have not looked, but I assume I can configure this laptop to only power down the screen and not sleep or hibernate when on AC power. Older laptops we have had in the past supported this, the current laptop is fairly new and a higher end model so I assume it will as well.
Most likely there is a way to “wake” a laptop up from sleep or hibernation at a given time to backup and then go back to sleep or hibernation. But I have not looked into this at all.
Also I don’t use hibernation at all. I still find it buggy, even after all these years.
I turned off sleeping on the laptop when it’s plugged into AC power. That’s what I was planning on doing initially, but thought I’d ask here if there were better solutions. I already have several computers and servers running 24x7 in my house, and this laptop draws the least power of all of them. Having good backups is more important to me than saving a penny or two on my electric bill by having the laptop go to sleep.
For my home computers, I just let the backups run when it’s time. For laptops, that means sometimes after waking, the backup runs. I have found that most of the time, I don’t even notice.
For windows, you could do something with a scheduled task to stop the client service on battery and restart it on AC or something. You could also create a group and throttle the backups if you’re worried about performance.
Windows task scheduler has an option labeled “wake the computer to run this task”. In theory, you could then have a task that is a script that disables power saving temporarily, runs the backup manually, then enables the power saving again.
I guess it depends on your exact needs since this would require always running the task at the same time, etc.
