Found A Way To Pause A Render. Sort Of...

[Sockratease]

I was ready to leave for my employment this morning and had a render going in Mandelbulb 3D which ran all night, but despite the original estimate of 10 hours (which would have left me with an hour to spare) it said it still wanted 2 hours to finish  (and then there's the shadows calculation).

I couldn't be late, and didn't want to stop the render or leave the computer on all day, so I just left the render going and put the computer to sleep.

Sure enough, I just got home, woke up the 'puter, and it picked up right where it left off.

Not a true pause feature, but if you only want to pause a render while you go out (as opposed to freeing up processor cycles for other tasks) this trick works nicely   

Not sure if anyone else will find this helpful, but I'm posting it anyhow.   

[cytotox]

...
I couldn't be late, and didn't want to stop the render or leave the computer on all day, so I just left the render going and put the computer to sleep.

Sure enough, I just got home, woke up the 'puter, and it picked up right where it left off.

Not a true pause feature, but if you only want to pause a render while you go out (as opposed to freeing up processor cycles for other tasks) this trick works nicely   
Not sure if anyone else will find this helpful, but I'm posting it anyhow.   

Well, I really appreciate this info. I will test it on my PC; if it works, I'm sure that I will use this trick from time to time (for the same reason that you stated above).

[Sockratease]

Glad you found it helpful.

Not sure if it's OS Dependent, but it worked on Vista, so take that for what it's worth...

[Xenodimensional]

Works on Win 7, as does hibernating, which is perhaps better because you can unplug when a storm comes or if you go away. Most apps that 'render' survive sleep/suspend/hibernate unphased...   

[Buddhi]

I'm using hibernation very often also under Linux. I can't render overnight because I can't sleep when my computer is working (noise from fans).