Vista - Power Setting for 'sleep-like' mode

Hello,

I'm not sure what the correct terminology is, whether it is a sleep mode,
away mode or something else, but I'm trying to determine what power
configuration I should be using on my desktop. I have a home based business
& all of my business documents reside on my desktop computer which is running
Vista. I have file sharing setup between the desktop & my laptop (which is
running XP). The only issue is the files on my desktop are only accessable
when it is on, if I push the 'moon' button on the keyboard to put it to sleep
the desktop is no longer visible on the laptop. Is there some other power
setting I can use in Vista that will still allow me to put the desktop in
some sort of sleep-like mode but have the shared files accessible on the
network? Previously I was running XP on a different desktop & was able to do
this - I'm not sure if the computer actually went to sleep, but I could push
the button on my keyboard & the monitor would turn off & the computer would
go into a sleep like state but I think the hard drives remained on or
something???

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Consider purchasing a NAS and transfer files to that hard drive. Then u
won't need to leave a PC on. Sleep isnt gonna allow the hard drives to
be accessible as you have already noticed.

Dave

Yes... I have a NAS drive (on my personal PC at home, not at my office
location) that I use to keep my media files accessible. Am I losing my mind,
or was it possible to do what I'm trying to do on XP - I'm positive both my
office setup & personal setup had the ability to leave the hard drives
accessible. I've only run into this problem since purchasing Vista
computers. The only hesitation I have adding a NAS drive to my work desktop
is I already have a 1TB external drive (USB, not NAS) attached to that
computer that I use as my backup drive. The internal hard drive on the
desktop is 500GB - if I use a NAS drive then pretty much the only thing that
will be on the internal hard drive will be the OS & program files - a bit of
a waste of hard drive space. I've already invested money in a backup drive &
I don't really want to invest in a second drive for the convinience of file
accessiblity. At home it was a different story because my media files need
to be accessible by my stereo equipment.

"David" wrote:

> Consider purchasing a NAS and transfer files to that hard drive. Then u
> won't need to leave a PC on. Sleep isnt gonna allow the hard drives to
> be accessible as you have already noticed.
>
> Dave
>