Going Green: Utilizing S3 Standby Mode Without Losing Functionality.

– April 21, 2007Posted in: Articles, Editor's Picks, Guides, Hardware, Software / OS

How to Utilize S3 Standby and Still Have ‘Always On’ Access to Your Computer or Networked Drives
Introduction:

Because of increasing awareness in the general public about energy conservation, the ability to utilize low power states on desktop PCs is incredibly underdocumented and widely unused. My goal with this article is to change all that, to help computer users everywhere utilize these low power states without losing any original functionality of their network drives or remote applications. Heck, if you follow this guide, you may even be able to save a buck or two in the process. This guide will attempt to answer the following………….

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About Cbutters

http://fuelforthefire.ca/ chris nasr
Really great article, good work.
p.s. your slashdot it! link is broken and is keeping people from submitting comments.
Aldert
400 watt idling.. what kind of machine do you have? a quad opteron with 10 disks?
see http://saf.bio.caltech.edu/saving_power.html (at the end)
max power usage is a dual opteron 248 machine, 213 watts idle.
avg is 100 watts, which would be about 100 euro's a year.
0.1 * 24 * 365 * $0.12
http://H nem
Great article, will try definately give that a try.
Gene
>>much as $0.12 per kW/h
http://journal.skuzz.com Agent Smith
The only problem with the cost-savings estimation, is that it is very rare for an idling PC to actually consume .4kW. A power supply's consumption rating is a maximum rating, not the continuous use. I run several systems 24/7 at about $.11/kWh, and with my furnace, fridge, and other high-amperage appliances I never use more than $35/month in electricity. Not to suggest that additional power savings won't hurt in this global-warming filled world, but power savings on a desktop PC/server will probably not be nearly as dramatic given that most will be headless, idling, and not doing anything that will often utilize the full potential of the power supply.
Matt A
Great article. I will be doing this on my machines tonight or tomorrow. I will also monitor the electric bill to see the reduction. Thanks for putting this together.
http://captsolo.net/info/ CaptSolo
Thanks for the post.
Re. Network Wake-Up – how will this work for a PC on a wireless network? Its network card is receiving all the packets “in the air” on this network. Will it filter out those that are meant for this particular PC before waking it up?
And it may be a little difficult for people to leave comments to this post because of an unclosed HTML tag after the text “SlashDot It!”. Guess what happens when someone tries to comment.
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l0ne
Not to be a fanboy, but achieving the S3 standby mode with integrated ibernation failsafe on a Mac is as simple as closing the lid of the notebook (or Apple menu > Sleep).
Christopher
Does this require that your network card supports Wake on LAN?
http://inscrutable-exhortations.com X-treme-LLama
Hate to be nitpicky, but do us all a favor and change ’30 days in a week’ to ‘.. month.’ Other than that, decent tip, thanks mate!
http://inscrutable-exhortations.com X-treme-LLama
Hate to be nitpicky, but do us all a favor and change ’30 days in a week’ to ‘.. month.’ Other than that, decent tip, thanks mate!
– Oops, second thing. you need to end the tag on your “Slashdot It!” link.. because right now trying to click on anything in the “comment” section links me straight back to Slashdot.
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http://www.slashdot.org Carra
>
Using that newfangled metric system, are we??
>
Unit analysis problem.
I can save all of $34? That’s cheap — no thanks, I’ll just write you a single check for $34 for the lifetime of the computer and be done with it. I sure don’t want to dink with the registry over touching that dangerous registry (per the MS Q articles.)
In CP, I don’t have an “LAN / Advanced / Wake Up Capabilities” option, only the “Power Management” tab. And do you really want to tell users to use the IP address? (All of those numbers in a row, I was never good at math.) You might check on using the HOSTS file instead.
Yeah, I know; “works for me, might not for you”; YMMV.
Good article, nice try. Who knows, maybe someone might even DO it instead of just READ it.
Spikeles
1) The site is broken, fix the slashdot javascript link
2) It would have been nicer if you mentioned how much power you actually saved. You have made an assertion without evidence to back it up, i would like to see if the power savings are real or not.
http://www.is-dept.com Damon
This is very interesting, thanks for the artical.
One question though… does this process work with MS Server 2003 R2?
http://travis.pulley.org Travis Pulley
Minor correction of this part:
“Power bills are generally measured in kilowatt hours or “kW/h”s. Power rates might be as much as $0.12 per kW/h”
Kilowatt Hours are represented as kW-h or kWh. the forward slash would invert the time meaning kilowatts per hour, which is like saying horsepower per minute.
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John R
Nice article!
I just set this up on my computer.
I have a couple questions:
I have my machine connected to an APC UPS and I have the PowerChute software installed. Do you know if my machine will wake up and then shut down if needed when the power goes out?
Will my machine wake up for the automatic Windows Updates that I have scheduled every night?
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Joan
> I calculated (24 hours per day) * 30 days a week = 720 hours
Regional differences: in Europe we have 7 days in a week
CK
An excellent article. However, not sure if it really is a good idea applying the S3 power saving to a file server. Switching off a hard disk from spinning can really shorten its life span and you really want to avoid doing this frequently.
admin
Thanks for the comments guys, I just realized they were set to not automatically show up after posting. This is now fixed.
Also, I fixed the 30 days a week thing and fixed the slashdot link. Thanks for your help.
-Cbutters
Aaron
@ Travis Pulley:
The energy measurement IS (kilo)Watts per hour, so the slash is fine, that's how it shows up on MY bill.
If I used 1000 kW in a 30 day month, I used 1.3888 kW/h.
Can't compare to horsepower at all, you'd be better comparing voltage and horsepower. Voltage used means nothing without knowing how much current was drawn, just like horsepower means nothing without knowing how much weight needs to be moved (the weight of the vehicle + passengers).
http://captsolo.net/info/ CaptSolo
@Aaron:
Travis ir right. kW measure the power which is used by a device at any single moment in time (when it is on). Consumed power needs to be multiplied by the interval of time it was used for and then you get an amount of energy consumed during this time interval.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt-hour
Ipeunipig
80% or more of all HDD failure occur at powerup/powerdown. If you have important data on any of your disks, is it really worth losing that to save a few bucks a month on your power bill? (plus the cost of replacing the disk itself, after your data is gone.)
http://www.hgomez.org/blog Gomez
Thanks for posting this! I'm gonna set this up on my computer whenever i get home. I was in the same position with keeping my computer on 24/7 and was wanting to put it in standby mode, but still have access to it.
rek075
You never really answer your 3rd question: “Now that I have enabled a S3 Standby state, how can I get my computer to wake up without issues?” I have been trying to get S3 work on my machine for a while now. It goes into S3 fine (fans stop and everything), but it when it wakes up, the monitor does not wake, the hard drive is showing activity, and I can’t power it off regularly. I actually need to unplug it from the wall for it to recover from this.
mike
Being nitpicky here, but the first sentence really threw me for a loop:
“Because of increasing awareness in the general public about energy conservation, the ability to utilize low power states on desktop PCs is incredibly underdocumented and widely unused.”
Instead of “Because of…”, shouldn’t that read “In spite of…”???
For a few seconds, I wondered what on earth you were talking about.
However, I am REALLY looking forward to implementing this at home.
Greg
Power cycling your hard disks actually shortens their life. They last longer if they spin all the time. Something to think about if you are running a file server. You may save $10/mo. in power, but you might have to shell out $200 for a new HD when it dies.
DeafScribe
In Regedit, I don’t see a plain vanilla USB entry. I see:
usbaudio
usbccgp
usbehci
usbhub
usbohci
usbprint
usbscan
usbstor
usbuhci
I see similar entries in your screen shot. Which one, if any, should be edited when there’s no simple USB entry?
Mark
Thanks. It took a while to get the right IP addresses, but it works great. Too bad this type of energy conservation is not standard.
Mark
Erik
I sincerely doubt you have a computer that uses 400 watts idling. I have an APC UPS that measures current load plugged into my Athlon X2 4800+ desktop with dual video cards and two hard drives, two optical drives, and an assload of USB perhiperals – it uses 150 watts with idle CPU, and 250-275 when at 100% utilization of all the video cards and CPUs.
Ted
Does anyone know why I may be getting this? Also, I updated the driver but I still get the same message.
System Standby Failed error message
The device driver for the 'CP210x USB to UART Bridge Controller (COM14)' device is preventing the machine from entering standby. Please close all applications and try again. If the problem persists you many need to update the driver.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/personalspokesman Nick
Thanks for the tutorial, i'll give it a try some time.
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http://NewsFlash.tk MomKicker
I'm gonna try this one. Thanks…
BraneInAVat
This tutorial worked great except for my my computer comes out of S3 after only one minute if I have wake-on-LAN enabled. I suspect it is being awakened by network activity from my router or modem. Anyone have any ideas on how to keep my computer in S3 without resorting to magic packets (I want my Tivo to be able to wake my computer/Tivo file server).
http://www.cyclechaos.com/blog/ Motorcycle Guy
I've always wondered how wake-on-Lan actually worked. I've never seen it actually in use but seen it advertised lots.
http://krystalstealfan.org shadowman
Hi! How r u?
nice site!
phishstik
Also have problem that DeafScribe has in post 31 – I dont have a regular "usb" registry option as shown in tutorial, I have what DeafScribe already posted. Using WinXp sp2.
I tried S3 out anyways, and cannot get it to wake up so assuming I need to find that key somewhere else….
Regis
This is is a very good idea to try to save power for our planet and I really appreciate that page but I think the numbers are exagerated. My Dell GX520 takes 115W + 80W for screen, speedstep disabled. In S3, it takes 70W + 7W for screen. S3 is good, hibernation is much better if you can live with it.
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Thank you for idea
Flo
Post 31 and 43 describing the thing i face! I do not have a usb entry in regedit also. I have win xp pro sp3 32 bit. Nice artikel i tought i resolved my s3 problem… Can you please ad a comment on how to use s3 with usb keybord/mouse for people without usb in regedit?
PS i had s3 enabled in bios when i dit install xp. Motherboard gigabyte ga x48 dq6 (no jumpers for usb power or function in the bios…)
Many thanks!!!
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Going Green: Utilizing S3 Standby Mode Without Losing Functionality.

How to Utilize S3 Standby and Still Have ‘Always On’ Access to Your Computer or Networked Drives
Introduction:

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Going Green: Utilizing S3 Standby Mode Without Losing Functionality.

How to Utilize S3 Standby and Still Have ‘Always On’ Access to Your Computer or Networked Drives Introduction:

About Cbutters

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Categories

Archives

Meta

How to Utilize S3 Standby and Still Have ‘Always On’ Access to Your Computer or Networked Drives
Introduction: