Removing the hiberfil.sys

By default Windows Vista and Server 2008 have a hibernation file equal to the size of the amount of memory you are using. Of you have 12GB of RAM, that will be a 12GB hiberfil.sys. If you are using a small SSD, that would be a killer waste. Removing this file is a quick way to free up HD space, although considering how cheap drives are, you could always upgrade. Furthermore if you are using a virtual machine, you probably don’t need this space wasted either.

Now I do not know why they do this on the Server version since who hibernates a server (that being said I am sure some people probably do, silly tree huggers). The real bugger with this problem is that shutting off hibernation does not always remove the hiberfil.sys file. Alternatively, what if you want to remove it without needing to reboot the server. I found a very fast and simple way to do this is to launch a command prompt as an administrator and run the following command:

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

The other way is to run the disk clean up utility, this will disable hibernation and delete the hiberfil.sys. Instructions on doing this are here.