Suspend, hibernate or shut down?
Three ways to stop an instance, what each costs, and which to use.
On this page 4 sections
The Instance card at the bottom of the Tools tab has Suspend, Hibernate and Shut Down. The header and the sidebar's right-click menu have some of them too.
| Suspend | Hibernate | Shut Down | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What happens | Frozen, kept in memory. | Memory written to a file, then stopped. | Stopped at once. |
| Coming back | Almost instantly, exactly where it was. | A few seconds, exactly where it was. | A fresh start of Linux. |
| Holds memory on your Mac | Yes | No | No |
| Uses one of the four slots | Yes | No | No |
| Disk space on your Mac | None | A file about the size of its memory | None |
| Available when | Running | Running or suspended | Running or suspended |
Suspend#
For a short break. Nothing is saved to disk, so it's instant both ways — but the instance keeps its memory and its slot. MSL also suspends instances by itself when they're idle.
Hibernate#
For a longer break. The machine's whole memory is written to your Mac's disk and the instance stops, giving back its memory and its slot. Start brings it back exactly as it was — shells, programs and all. Saving takes longer the more memory the instance has.
This is also what MSL does to every running instance when your Mac shuts down, restarts or logs out. See Sleep, shutdown and battery.
Shut Down#
Shutting down also throws away a hibernated session, if there was one: after a power-off, the saved memory no longer matches the disk.
Which one?#
- Back in a minute → Suspend, or just leave it — idle instances suspend themselves.
- Done for the day, want the memory back → Hibernate.
- Want a clean start of Linux →
sudo poweroffinside it, then Start.