Pagefile.sys hiberfil.sys 13gb total

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grandpatzer

Gawd
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Feb 24, 2010
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so I have a Intel 40gb ssd that had 4.8gb free space, Started windirstat and saw that the guilty guys where pagefile.sys and hiberfile.sys.


I have 4*2gb XMS2 so total of 8gb memory on the work PC, I don't mind having the hiberfile.

Can I atleast remove the Pagefile.sys which is 7gb, maybe move it to my Corsair XMS2 memory?
 
You can't move a paging file to memory unless you have a RAMdisk created on a separate set of RAM that isn't being used by Windows. The only real option would be to move the paging file to another hard drive.
 
You can easily turn off the hibernation, which is almost never used on a desktop machine. Either change the Power settings to disable both hibernation and hybrid sleep, or run the following at a command prompt (with administrator privileges):

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

As for the page file, the easiest thing to do with it is to set a manual size - you can pretty safely drop it down to 2GB.
 
EDIT- Forceman beat me to it lol.
You could also just reduce the size of the pagefile. With 8Gb ram you'll probably be fine with a 1Gb pagefile. That's my setup and never had a problem with it.

You said you don't mind the hiberfil, but if you don't use hibernate and want to remove it, do :

powercfg.exe –h off,

at the command prompt, and that will kill it off.
 
Well I like to put my computer to sleep because for some reason the bios take atleast 15-25sec to load to windows, my gaming PC only takes 3-5sec.

From sleep my PC boots up instantly.

I'll put the pagefile to 1gb and see what happens, as I have 8gb memory hopefuly that is good.
 
Yeah I always use hybrid-sleep. It's so much more convenient to just leave everything open all the time minimized in the tray, hit sleep, then when you come back hit one key and everything is back instantly. The only time I ever actually reboot is when a software/driver change requires it, or when I'm going to be gone for more than 24 hours.
 
I've honestly never timed a wake from hibernate. But, with regular sleep function, mine wakes in 3-4 seconds with several apps open.
 
Hibernate allows complete shutdown of all system components with no power keeping them in a lower power state. The hiberfil.sys file stores a complete copy of RAM onto the HDD.

Sleep, on the other hand, keeps the RAM alive with power & everything else is kept at standby.

So, if the power goes out, you lose your work with Sleep but Hibernate will recover after power has been restored.
 
When you hibernate, Windows will copy the contents of ram to the hard disk, and then copy it all back to ram when you wake it up.

With normal sleep that info stays in ram and uses a miniscule amount of power to keep it "alive". This is theoretically faster.

Hybrid sleep keeps copies in both locations, ram and hdd. In case ram contents are lost somehow.

The point to hibernation and hybrid sleep, I suppose, is if you have a power failure under hibernation/hybrid, ram contents will be lost (hibernate won't save it in ram anyways), but your data will still exist on the hdd.
 
Which is why hibernate is not usually used in desktops, since they always have power available. Laptops are normally where you see hibernation used. And waking from sleep should be much faster than waking from hibernation, since the data is already in RAM (while from hibernation it has to be read off the disk).
 
Yes, if you have a power loss under regular sleep, any unsaved work in ram will be lost. If you regularly save your work this won't really be a problem to worry about though.

If by dying you mean damaged, then no, nothing to worry about.
 
grandpatzer said:
so If power goes out there is higher risk of the memory modules dying not having hibernate?
Click to expand...

Hi, grandpatzer,

RAM (memory) is volatile, information is only retained as long as power is present. Once power is no longer present the information the RAM held is gone. That is why the information in RAM is written to a file when a system hibernates.

When a system is in the sleep state the RAM does not lose power and everything in the memory is retained in the volatile memory. If power is lost, for whatever reason, the information contained in the RAM is lost.

Read up on it at wikipedia, Dynamic random-access memory.

Hope this helps.

Chuklr
 
Chances are, if you are using a desktop, you've never used hibernate anyway. The system won't automatically go to hibernate, like a laptop will, so you would have had to tell the system to hibernate instead of sleep, which is unlikely. The chances of you needing hibernate on a desktop system are not worth the loss of 8GB of space on an SSD - unless you routinely use hibernate instead of sleep, which doesn't sound like the case here.
 
Forceman said:
Chances are, if you are using a desktop, you've never used hibernate anyway. The system won't automatically go to hibernate, like a laptop will, so you would have had to tell the system to hibernate instead of sleep, which is unlikely. The chances of you needing hibernate on a desktop system are not worth the loss of 8GB of space on an SSD - unless you routinely use hibernate instead of sleep, which doesn't sound like the case here.
Click to expand...

On this PC Ive used Windows 7 pro 32bit and 64bit, there is right now a 4.8gb hiberfil.sys

So my suspection is that hibernation has always been active.
 
grandpatzer said:
so I have a Intel 40gb ssd that had 4.8gb free space, Started windirstat and saw that the guilty guys where pagefile.sys and hiberfile.sys.


I have 4*2gb XMS2 so total of 8gb memory on the work PC, I don't mind having the hiberfile.

Can I atleast remove the Pagefile.sys which is 7gb, maybe move it to my Corsair XMS2 memory?
Click to expand...
This is what I recommend.

1. If you don't plan on using Hibernation, turn it off. From an elevated cmd prompt, type in
powercfg -h off
This will delete the hiberfile.sys.

2. Adjust the page file size. My recent change of opinion on pagefile has lead me to suggesting for people with SSD's to use the min/max approach. Set the min pagefile to 400MB (smallest you can have) and the maximum to equal what your ram is. Your pagefile.sys will start at 400MB and stay there until it is needed. If it is needed it will grow but then return to 400MB. With 8GB of ram it will likely never go over 400MB. I believe this is the superior method to adjust the pagefile because you gain the advantage of having a large pagefile if you need it, but it will keep you with a small one if you don't. You want the pagefile on your SSD by the way. SSD's excel at small reads and writes, which is what most to the pagefile are. For magnetic storage, I suggest staying with a static pagefile.
 
jthomas said:
EDIT- Forceman beat me to it lol.
You could also just reduce the size of the pagefile. With 8Gb ram you'll probably be fine with a 1Gb pagefile. That's my setup and never had a problem with it.
Click to expand...

Just a caution :) about the size of the pagefile. On an older (XP) system, I once had disk space issues, so I set up a fixed, very small pagefile. Then after a while, my system would either freeze or crash without warning, and I couldn't reproduce the problem.

So I cleaned up disk space, reset the pagefile to a larger fixed size, and didn't have those problems after that.
 
Forceman said:
Which is why hibernate is not usually used in desktops, since they always have power available. Laptops are normally where you see hibernation used. And waking from sleep should be much faster than waking from hibernation, since the data is already in RAM (while from hibernation it has to be read off the disk).
Click to expand...

It's actually the other way around. Because laptops are often picked up and put into backpacks or bags immediately after being put to sleep, the system doesn't use hibernate for fear of possible damage to the hard disk or system due to heat. Additionally, laptops tend to be opened and closed more often, so they tend to use the sleep state.
 
Tawnos said:
It's actually the other way around. Because laptops are often picked up and put into backpacks or bags immediately after being put to sleep, the system doesn't use hibernate for fear of possible damage to the hard disk or system due to heat. Additionally, laptops tend to be opened and closed more often, so they tend to use the sleep state.
Click to expand...

Every laptop I've ever owned, which isn't a lot to be fair, has gone to sleep when closed, then automatically went into hibernate at some point later. If they stayed in sleep all the time, they'd quickly drain the battery.
 
I would never allow a laptop to use sleep mode when closed and put away. All of those components are still generating heat. I set laptops to hibernate when closed, so they fully shut down. Writing a few hundred MB of data to the HDD when you close the lid isn't going to 'damage the hard disk' anymore than the normal usage it gets. I'd like to argue that putting it to sleep, then throwing it into a backpack does more long term damage than writing a bit of data to the hard drive, because you know, that's what it's there for.
 
bigdogchris said:
This is what I recommend.

1. If you don't plan on using Hibernation, turn it off. From an elevated cmd prompt, type in
powercfg -h off
This will delete the hiberfile.sys.

2. Adjust the page file size. My recent change of opinion on pagefile has lead me to suggesting for people with SSD's to use the min/max approach. Set the min pagefile to 400MB (smallest you can have) and the maximum to equal what your ram is. Your pagefile.sys will start at 400MB and stay there until it is needed. If it is needed it will grow but then return to 400MB. With 8GB of ram it will likely never go over 400MB. I believe this is the superior method to adjust the pagefile because you gain the advantage of having a large pagefile if you need it, but it will keep you with a small one if you don't. You want the pagefile on your SSD by the way. SSD's excel at small reads and writes, which is what most to the pagefile are. For magnetic storage, I suggest staying with a static pagefile.
Click to expand...

Agree.

On a desktop, simply put a small page file on the SSD (paging on SSD is VERY good, but space is at a premium). Something like 1GB, that's what I do on my 60GB. Put a Windows-controlled / adjustable size one on a HDD as a backup.

And kill hibernate as posted above. You don't really need it on a desktop as others have said. Sleep does the trick instead.
 
Thanks to everyone, on my desktop I killed hibernation and put pagefile at 2gb to be "safe" :cool::cool:

I have a laptop that I'm going to put a 64gb SSD in, I guess it is smart for me to keep the hibernation on the laptop then.

The laptop only has 4gb of ram, don't really have that much stuff on it so I guess it's good having 8gb of pagefile and 5gb hibernation on it?
 
grandpatzer said:
The laptop only has 4gb of ram, don't really have that much stuff on it so I guess it's good having 8gb of pagefile and 5gb hibernation on it?
Click to expand...
An 8 GB page file is unnecessary. Like I said, 400MB min, amount of ram =max. A 5 GB hibernation is much larger than Windows would make it. You can't control how big it is.
 
grandpatzer said:
Thanks to everyone, on my desktop I killed hibernation and put pagefile at 2gb to be "safe" :cool::cool:

I have a laptop that I'm going to put a 64gb SSD in, I guess it is smart for me to keep the hibernation on the laptop then.

The laptop only has 4gb of ram, don't really have that much stuff on it so I guess it's good having 8gb of pagefile and 5gb hibernation on it?
Click to expand...

Normally the pagefile is 1.5x to 2x the size of installed RAM, and the hibernate file is tha same size as the installed RAM. You can't adjust the hibernate file size, but you can and should limit the pagefile size.
 
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Forceman said:
Normally the pagefile is 1.5x to 2x the size of installed RAM,
Click to expand...
It depends on the amount of ram installed on the system if you're allowing Windows to automatically manage.

Windows creates a single paging file that’s minimum size is 1.5 times RAM if RAM is less than 1GB, and RAM if it's greater than 1GB, and that has a maximum size that's three times RAM. On Windows Vista and Server 2008, the minimum is intended to be large enough to hold a kernel-memory crash dump and is RAM plus 300MB or 1GB, whichever is larger. The maximum is either three times the size of RAM or 4GB, whichever is larger.
Click to expand...

Source

Windows 7
Through extensive use of Beta telemetry data, we have determined we can slim down the Windows disk footprint further by reducing the default page file size to be 100% of the available main memory.
Click to expand...

Also, here is a link where Microsoft says that the page file should be on the SSD.
 
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bigdogchris said:
It depends on the amount of ram installed on the system if you're allowing Windows to automatically manage.



Source
Click to expand...

I would swear that it set the page file on mine to be at least 8GB (with 8 GB RAM) even though that says 4 GB maximum.

Edit: Just checked, and it does set an 8GB page file with 8GB of installed RAM if set to system managed.
 
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Forceman said:
I would swear that it set the page file on mine to be at least 8GB (with 8 GB RAM) even though that says 4 GB maximum.

Edit: Just checked, and it does set an 8GB page file with 8GB of installed RAM if set to system managed.
Click to expand...

The PC has 40gb Intel x25-v and 8gb memory, I put the pagefile at 2gb so far no problems.

In the thread many said that 400mb-1gb is enough for pagefile.
 
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