Disable hibernation and save hard-drive space in Windows Vista



For the few people that can’t hibernate their computer because it automatically resumes, or the ones that just don’t use hibernation, you’ll want to disable this since the feature consumes as much hard-drive space as you have in RAM. A simple command prompt entry can disable hibernation.

1) Click on the Start Pearl > type cmd in the Search Bar > press Ctrl+Shift+Enter

2) Enter powercfg -H off

Once hibernation is off, you’ll still need to use Disk Cleaner to get rid of the files stored on your computer for previous hibernation sessions. To access Disk Cleaner:

1) Open the Start Pearl again and type cleanmgr in the Search bar.

Windows Vista will then prompt you to choose the partition you wish to clean. Select the desired partition, and the rest should be pretty straight forward.

On my computer, hibernation consumed about 510MB. This information is listed under Hibernation File Cleaner. You’ll want to clear all that since you won’t be using hibernation anymore.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Tutorials, Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

8 Responses to “Disable hibernation and save hard-drive space in Windows Vista”

  1. Jerry Says:
    March 21st, 2007 at 11:02 pm

    Does this only apply to Windows Vista or Windows XP as well, I want to disable my hibernation seeing as i never use it.

  2. Albert Ng Says:
    March 21st, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    Only for Vista. This is how you disable hibernation in XP:

    1. Right click on desktop, then click properties
    2. Click on the screen-saver tab
    3. Then click the Power button under Monitor Power
    4. Click the Hibernation tab, then uncheck the box next to Enable Hibernation
    5. Press OK

    Let me know how it goes Jerry

  3. Jerry Says:
    March 21st, 2007 at 11:37 pm

    Will it save as much space as it would for the Vista?

  4. Albert Ng Says:
    March 21st, 2007 at 11:42 pm

    I’m pretty sure hibernation works the same way in XP as it does in Vista

  5. Jerry Says:
    March 22nd, 2007 at 11:32 pm

    Wow, Albert this worked great! I went from 481 megabytes to 866 megabytes on my bad computer which really has a total of 10 gigabytes. Works like a charm, great article.
    -Jerry

  6. Larry Roberts Says:
    August 4th, 2007 at 10:21 am

    My problem is hibernation stopped working for no reason. All of my settings are correct. Have only had my computer for 3 weeks. I can hibernate manually, but not autimatically. Why? Have a Toshiba Satellite A215-S4747 with Windows Vista. Thank You.

  7. George Says:
    September 8th, 2007 at 9:55 am

    Will sleep feature still work if I disable hibernation?

  8. Paresh Says:
    December 16th, 2007 at 6:15 pm

    1) Click on the Start Pearl > type cmd in the Search Bar > press Ctrl+Shift+Enter

    Here in first step mentioned “Start Pearl” what is it? I didn’t find Start Pearl in Vista.
    On Command Prompt, I tried “powercfg -H off” but it says you don’t have permission to enable or diable hibernation. I am an administrator of the PC though. Am I missing anything?

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