You’re reading this article because there’s a gigantic hiberfil.sys file sitting in the root of your drive, and you want to get rid of it to free up some space… but you can’t!, Well you cant just remove it with a delete to recycle bin because its a system file but luckily, you actually can delete it, and i will show you how i overcame my own whoping 3.6GB hiberfil.sys file.
The more memory you have in your PC, the bigger the file will be.
So What is hiberfil.sys Anyway?
Windows has two power management modes that you can choose from: one is Sleep Mode, which keeps the PC running in a low power state so you can almost instantly get back to what you were working on. The other is Hibernate mode, which completely writes the memory out to the hard drive, and then powers the PC down entirely, so you can even take the battery out, put it back in, start back up, and be right back where you were.
Hibernate mode uses the hiberfil.sys file to store the the current state (memory) of the PC, and since it’s managed by Windows, you can’t delete the file.
Disable Hibernate (and Delete hiberfil.sys) in Windows 7 or Vista
You’ll need to open an administrator mode command prompt by right-clicking on the command prompt in the start menu, and then choosing Run as Administrator. Once you’re there, type in the following command:
powercfg -h off

And Guess what? You’ll also notice that the file is magically gone!