Disabling Hibernation (hiberfil.sys), Save More Storage Space on Windows Device

If you're rocking a Windows device with super limited storage—like my Advan Vanbook W80 with a mere 16GB—then you know the struggle is real. Windows itself already takes up a hefty chunk, leaving little room for anything else. Every megabyte counts, and that's where disabling hibernation comes in clutch.

KituTech — Hibernation is a handy feature that saves our session to disk, allowing you to resume exactly where you left off on your Windows device. But the downside? It creates a massive file called hiberfil.sys that can gobble up gigabytes of storage. On my tiny 16GB tablet, this was a deal-breaker.

By disabling hibernation, we can reclaim a significant amount of space. In my case, it's huge when you're working with such a limited drive. That’s enough for a few more apps, updates, or even some precious offline files.

Should We Disable hibernation on our Windows device?

If we rarely use hibernation or mostly rely on sleep mode, especially if we have the charger all the time, then yes, disabling it is a no-brainer. But if we need hibernation for battery efficiency, or want our Windows device boot instantly every time, we might want to think twice.

For me, the trade-off was worth it—I’d rather have more storage than a feature I barely used especially on my Windows PC.

Seeing how much hiberfil.sys actually takes space on our PC's storage

First, we might want to see how much Window's hibernation or hiberfil.sys uses of our PC's precious storage drive. To do this, follow the steps below:

Launch File Explorer app.
Navigate to "This PC" on the sidebar, then to "… (C:)" drive.
Click "View" item on the menu bar on top, on the right section, make sure "Hidden items" is checked.
Back to View menu again, then click "Options" located on the right section.
A "Folder Options" window will appear, click "View" tab.
On the "Advanced settings" section, scroll down to find "Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)", and make sure it's unticked/unchecked, choose "Yes" on the warning windows that might be appears, don't worry, nothing will happens as long we're not touching any files here. 😀 Click "OK" on the bottom of the Windows.
Now, we we browse to our PC's root (C:) directory, we can see a file named hiberfil.sys if hibernation is enabled on our Windows PC.

Steps to disable hibernation (hiberfil.sys) on Windows

Launch Windows PowerShell as admin mode. To do this easily, right click on the Windows icon on our taskbar, then click "Windows PowerShell (Admin)". Wait a moment until a line C:\Windows\system32 appears.
Now, on the Windows PowerShell, type the magic (or not) code:
```
powercfg.exe /hibernate off
```
And hit enter, we won't get any response here.
To check if the hibernation is successfully disabled and our PC's storage has been freed from the sheer size of the hiberfil.sys file, navigate with File Explorer to our PC's C: root directory again.
Done! It's recommended to revert back the File Explorer's view option back now if we don't need it, untick again the "Hidden items", and tick again the "Hide protected operating system files…" like on our previous article section.

Storage management is a constant battle on low-capacity devices such as my cheap Windows tablet, but small tweaks like this make a big difference. If you’re in the same boat, consider disabling hibernation and giving your Windows device a little breathing room. Every extra gigabyte helps! 😆