What is hiberfil.sys and how to delete in Windows 7 free up hard drive space
As from our last post, why your hard drive is always shrinking even though you did not do anything, we talked about using the freeware TreeSize to view where you have the largest chunk of data on your hard drive. If you look deep enough you will found out that there are two files called pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys that occupy over few GB of hard drive space. If you are the kind person that does not use Hibernate then this article is for you.
When you turn off your computer using hibernate, the operating system needs to store all your current running program states onto hard disk so that programs can resume where they left off when you power up your PC again. To achieve this, the OS need to save all the information into a file called hiberfil.sys. Windows OS (7, vista, XP) usually stores this as a hidden file under your C directory or your main OS partition.
So if you never use hibernate, than its time for you to get your hard drive space back.
[Note: Hibernate mode is not sleep mode. When hibernating your computer completely shuts down, however, under sleep mode your PC is not completely shut down; it still consumes a small amount of power.]
The best way to delete hiberfil.sys or disable hibernate:
- Go to Start menu, type “cmd” open up command prompt
- Type “powercfg.exe -h off” [make sure you are an Administrator]
- ENTER
- Type “exit”
- ENTER
RESTART YOUR PC and you are all set
After restart you should be able to see more free space on your hard drive.
source via [jonathanhu.com]
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Easiest way is to create a shortcut on the desktop as “powercfg.exe -h off” without the quotes then right click it and “Run As Administrator”.
Job done
Thanks! Great hint, I have been searching for this for the past three hours… It works too. I am useing the 64 bit Win 7 RC and couldn’t find anywhere to turn hibenation off.
Great tip I’ve been searching for 2.7 seconds and found this article. Thanks!
Great tip I've been searching for 2.7 seconds and found this article. Thanks!
I get an error msg that I do not have permission to change hibernate. I am the administrator
you might be the only user, and might be the administrator. BUT you are not running the “cmd” in administrator mode.
Make sure you are running this in admin, see the screen shoot top left “Administrator”
you can do that by right click > “Run as Administrator”
cheers
it doesn’t appear that option when i right click, and I am the administrator
I install Windows 7 Ultimate 64 on my laptop which was shipped with Vista Home Basic from manufacturer. I did all the necessary prerequisite checks prior to installing Win 7 and my computer is compatible. Did a custom installation, not upgrade. Everything seems to work fine…however when I right click on a file to use the built-in checksum feature of Windows Ultimate it does not come up. Instead, what i see is the menu items that were seen in Vista. I know it exists as I have used it on my desktop which is running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 as well.
Can anyone tell me what the problem might be? Thanks in advance
Works flawless! 10 seconds of work and I now have 3GB free. Word of advice, never install Windows 7 with a 20gb partition
.
Works flawless! 10 seconds of work and I now have 3GB free. Word of advice, never install Windows 7 with a 20gb partition
.
Wow, just freed up 5 gigs of disk space! Cheers! Now, how about pagefile.sys too? I know, it's virtual memory, but I've turned it off but pagefile.sys is still gobbling up 6 gigs of my disc space.
yes pagefile.sys is for virtual memory. and its highly recommended to not to disable it even if you have lots of memory (say even you have 16GB or more memory)
Worked like a charm thanx a lot
say i want to backup my system with a tool like easeus todo backup.. in a pe envioronment, i can safely 0 byte the pagefile.sys, but hiberfil.sys, i can’t touch at all.. why is that? logic says if i’m backing it up, i could just script a powercfg.exe -h on at startup, but kinda ridiculous too… (0 byting it temporarily until it reboots, and system would restore it (at least, pagefile.sys gets restored immediately..)
thnx work like charm u are my hero
windows 7 user to delete by using run command with permission on alt+clr+enter ok…………
enjoy and for seing
its working not jock…………….
Very Useful Thanx
Awesome, spent ages trying to reduce my Windows 7 Directory size! Many thanks!!
Thanks it helped on hard disk space