Put your iMac or Mac Mini to hibernate

While wondering why my iMac did not have a true hibernate option (power surges are common here at night, so regular sleep is not advisable/useful), I came across this hint by pure chance:

# pmset -a hibernate 1

This converts the "Sleep" into a true hibernate mode. It is slower than normal sleep, so it is not for nobody, and (IMHO) does not make sense in MacBooks since they have a battery to sustain the RAM. But fit like a glove for my iMac and my usage pattern.

There are other modes to play with (Safe Sleep, which is normal sleep + save RAM to disk in case of power outage; Hibernate with encryption of RAM; and so on). Just Google for them.