Hiberfil.sys

Hiberfil.sys

If you havn’t you will at sometime when cleaning up your computer come across “ Hiberfil.Sys “ Its size can vary from 250MB to over 1GB.

And it is normally located at C:\hiberfil.sys,

You may try to delete the file ( This is not a good idea to delete files you don't understand )

However, in this case Windows prohibits deletion

This Windows XP feature is not very well documented, and it will be totally new to users of older systems such as Windows 95 or 98.

It is called Windows Hibernation.

What happens is that instead of shutting down, and restarting your computer. Windows takes a copy of everything running on your system, places it in the hard drive, and then places your hardware in what could be termed a sleep mode..

The so-called advantage of this is that if you move the mouse the computer wakes up and is quicker than a shutdown

However, most people find little difference between shutting down and using hibernation.

Furthermore for those who backup their system with drive imaging, the hiberfil.sys can alter the size by as much as 1GB and consequently slower to copy/restore.

Why is it so big well Hibernation takes everything in memory and writes it to your hard drive as the hiberfil.sys file.

If you have 512MB of memory, then hiberfil.sys will obviously be approx.512MB. If you have 1GB, the file will be around 1GB.

Note:-

If you do not use hibernation, hiberfil.sys will still take up this huge amount of disk space.

Consequently it is advisable to turn off the hibernation feature

(By default, hibernate is activated automatically when XP is installed).

How to do it: - Go to :- Start > Control Panel > Power Options

Double click Power Options

Select the Hibernate tab, Remove the tick/check from “Enable hibernate support “ Click Apply.

Restart your computer and hiberfil.sys will be automatically deleted.

If however you wish for some reason or other to use Hibernation in the future it means a visit to Microsoft for how to enable it again

In Win 7 Control Panel > Small Icons > Power options

Change when Computer Sleeps > Never

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