Hibernate or NOT TO Hibernate that is the question

Hybrid sleep when I need too. Hibernate is obsolete. 7 has far better support than previous windows OS's.

I turn off. Windows 7 is very fast on startup (less than 30 seconds) so I don't feel the need to hibernate (which I have never done on it) or sleep. Hibernate would probably take more time than startup depending on what I have open at the time I put it to hibernate, and sleep, let's just say I move my laptop a lot so it's a no for sleep. My desktop is still on Vista so I probably won't have time to test those things on a desktop before finishing college, getting a job and building a new computer.

Mine is set at whatever default is.
But I turn the system off when we are not there for the day.
Otherwise, whenever we are there it is in whatever the default settings are
it takes about 2 seconds to start doing anything

From off,, it takes about 30 +/- sec or so, never really timed it, before I can start browsing internet or explorer.

Pretty much, if I do leave my laptop, I would leave it on plugged. And my power settings when plugged are not to go to sleep, or not even turn off display and wallpaper. It's just there the way I left it. (Plugged)

Now, if I'm not going to use it for a while, I go to hibernate, then shut down. My Hard Drive is 250 GBs, so I'm not so worried. >.>

I have a laptop running on high performance power setting, I only plug in the mains to charge it and get about 3-4hrs run before re-charge. I have never used sleep or hibernate, just turn it off when not using it. Takes 23 seconds to reboot so I feel this is fine.

I have been using hibernate and switched to sleep but when I come out of sleep my G drive is gone. I can get it back on a reboot. Does not happen on hibernate. G and F drives are both 640 GB Western Digital. I have 4 drives and they are all WDC.

Anyone have any idea what would cause this?

I put it in sleep mode every time because it loads up faster. Sick of waiting forever when I'm just to wait for it restart.