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How to remove the Hiberfil.sys file in Windows 2008


Article Information
Article ID: 79
Author: Paul Monaghan
Created: 5/16/2009
Modified: 5/16/2009
Views: 358

It seems that Windows 2008 Server enables hibernation by default. This is quite interesting since I'm not sure how many people actually hibernate a server. Nevertheless, it's something we need to deal with. Particularly for those (like me) who do most of their work in VMs.

As you may know, Windows creates a file named hiberfil.sys in the root of the system drive for systems where hibernation is enabled. The hiberfil.sys file is always the same size as physical RAM. In a VM where hibernation is normally replaced with the VM software's suspend feature, that can be quite a sizeable chunk of wasted space.


Trouble is, you can't disable hibernation anywhere in the GUI. It must be disabled from the command line using the command:

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

The file will be removed from your system and give your a big chunk of disk space back.


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