W7: How to move location of hiberfil.sys ?


So now that I'm running W7 x64, I've upped my memory from 4 GB to 12 GB.
That was painless.

When I created my W7 partition, figured that a 22 GB partition would be more then sufficient. (I used an 18 GB for W7 x86 & that was fine.)

Looking now, out of my 22 GB, I only have 4 GB free.
And there is nothing there except for Windows.

Where did all my space go?

Well, lets see, hiberfil.sys is taking up

9 GB

of disk space!


So I right-click my desktop, figure I'll go into the Properties there (just like it's always been, err XP) & make the change.


Right! Well, wrong.


No such settings there.


Seems you need to use the POWERCFG command.
And you cannot change the location.
It must be at the root of the system partition.

And the most you can do to change its size is to set it to 50% of total memory, so for me, it seems the smallest size I can make it is 6 GB!


But it seems it also needs contiguous space in which to create itself.

So if I were to disable it, create a huge space-taking file (Contig -n) such that I would have only say 4 GB of space left (& assuming that would be contiguous) & then enable it, seemingly it would take that 4 GB (which would be asinine in itself if it left me with no free space), then delete the Contig created file, thereby "setting" the hiberfil.sys to 4 GB ? (Or would it upon seeing the newly freed space, resize itself?)


And looking further, I see that my pagefile.sys is now 12 GB, but at least that is on a different partition (with what was originally more, but now ever diminishing space).


You can't win for nothing :rolleyes:!



C:\>POWERCFG -H -SIZE 50
The hiberfile size has been set to: 6437789696 bytes.




Oh, & lets not mention that hibernating, & returning from hibernation now takes longer too.


Well, the snow has now stopped.
Start around 7:am, stopped at noon.
But looking at the forecast there's more to come, heh, http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Westminster+MD+21157.
(And power just blinked. And I have yet to even turn the heat on, about 58 F - inside.)

22GB Partition big enough? You figured wrong. 40GB is more like it. I recently bumped Win7 partition ( OS only ) to 60gb when I saw free space dropping below 13 gb.( And I don't use Hibernation )

Don't forget all of the security update go to your OS partition. Harder to find and delete than in WinXP as well. And many files from various programs go there as well..despite installation to a different partition.

No way is Win7 going to operate correctly with only 4gb of free space.

Funny about this. I race cars ( Autocross, Hillclimbs, Road Race ) and see many racers take a perfectly good new car...and decide to make it " better " and " faster " . They often end up making the car slower and create reliability and ride/noise problems. In essence..they've made the car worse by trying to " out engineer " the real engineers and manufacturers who spend hundreds of millions on R&D and thousands of man hours testing.

This (Edit: actually the Partition thread ) reminds me of the same scenario. Just some friendly food for thought..... ;-)

Yeah, but a lot of that development money (cars) is spent on insanely complicated air filter containment devices and absurdly complicated battery protection encapsulation units, but a lot of cars still don't have a useful glove box, which you need to hold the towels to wipe up the spilled coffee from the cup holder that insures spillage if you do something stupid like shift gears.

But I hear you on performance mods by the kids - pathetic what some people do to their cars (short springs and tall wheels being my favorite bitch, especially when used with stock shocks.)

Oh, on topic, no hib for me, but still 34GB used for C: (with 8GB pagefile.)

My point wasn't so much the size of the partition I happened to choose.

It was more that I picked a number, & even though that number was 4 GB greater then my x86 install (& what had been more then fine with W7 x86 & 4 GB or RAM), was now not enough due to the exponential growth of hiberfil.sys (when I increased my RAM to 12 GB).

And then the fact that in XP you could move its location (somewhere with lots of free space, say) & you could do it easily, from a GUI, where now, the GUI is gone & you have to do it from a command prompt. (I am certainly not adverse to the command prompt & POWERCFG is certainly easy to deal with, but not all command line utils are.)

(And actually I spent far more time looking for the GUI option, only to find out it isn't, then to make the change to resize from the command line.)

I have a 60 gb SSD for my Win 7 Pro OS.
Been running it since Win 7 became available.
I have been using another drive for everything else. Games, programs,backup, media and such.
The C drive has been staying between 35 to 40 GB.
I don't use hibernation, neither.

Hibernation is stupid.... with modern computers with 2 Gb+ RAM, it actually takes longer to come out of hibernation than to boot up from scratch.

I would turn that off, and then your hibernation file will be gone.

powercfg -h off

If you ARE going to have a hiberation file, it really should be the same size as your installed RAM.

I always shut that off. Waste of Space.

I don't think so.
I find it very convenient.

I rarely "turn off" (as I hibernate).
I rarely restart (perhaps once a month, generally only along with MS updates).

I generally keep stuff open - for long periods of time.

Hibernate allows me to keep stuff open, to "turn off" my computer (without actually "shutting down"), to not loose where I was (as I have not shut down), & it does so quickly.


Never used to use it, but now (& for a good while now), I find it beneficial.

Is there some reason you don't want to use " Standbye "? ( S3 )

Only time I use Hibernation is on Laptops. Of course is you live in an area that has frequent power outages, then I would understand the reason for using " Hibernation " over " Standbye ".

Better yet use a UPS if you're in an area with power problems ;)

I used to use Standby.

Don't recall why I stopped? If I were running into issues or ...?
Maybe it was just that with W7, Hibernate was convenient & worked well?


The UPS is here too. But that's not an end all, cause even if the computer is in Standby, the UPS will only have so much reserve power, so on an extended outage ...

I like to see Windows get rebooted properly, often.

As it stands, hibernation and suspend make me money. Windows runs like shit, and eventually something will get corrupted if it doesn't get proper reboots often. Especially on some desktop systems where hardware combinations and drivers aren't well tested to be suspend safe.

I just wouldn't do it. In fact I wouldn't run Windows for a full day without rebooting it... I completely distrust it, everything about it. I don't even leave my computer unattended, while booted with Windows, for that matter.

I have gone over 30 days without a re-boot on my W7 64 bit and Vista 32 bit with nary a problem. I turned of the Hiberfil system on all 3 of my computers which includes a laptop.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 offer Hybrid-Sleep. It's basically a combination of Sleep and Hibernation. It saves your computer state to both RAM (Sleep) and the hard drive (Hibernation). Under normal conditions the system goes to "sleep" and comes out of "sleep". However, if the power is interrupted to the system and you lose the information in RAM (sleep) your system will be able to restart in the previous state from the HD (hibernation).

All 3 of my computers run this way. They go to "sleep" and come back out in seconds. I had a UPS battery die recently and lost power to one of them while it was in "sleep". As a result everything that was in RAM for "sleep" was lost. Hit the power button and it came back on via the "hibernate" side of the equation. Bingo right back where I left off. It took a little longer though of course since it was off the HD instead of the RAM. Been running my machines this way since Vista came out and now on 7.

I don't see that?
Not sure how my BIOS is configured offhand?
(That's mine on the right.)




"Advanced Configuration and Power Interface"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface

What do you mean you don't see it? On your left hand graphic it's right there where it says "Allow hybrid sleep".

It's what is used by Windows 7 and Vista by default. If you don't want to use it as the default sleep mode then you have to specifically disable it.

Quote:

Hybrid sleep

Sleep mode and hibernation can be combined: the contents of RAM are first copied to non-volatile storage like for regular hibernation, but then, instead of powering down, the computer enters sleep mode. This approach combines the benefits of sleep mode and hibernation: The machine can resume instantaneously, but it can also be powered down completely (e.g. due to loss of power) without loss of data, because it is already effectively in a state of hibernation. This mode is called "hybrid sleep" in Microsoft Windows.

A hybrid mode is supported by some portable Apple Macintosh computers<1>, compatible hardware running Windows Vista and 7, and some specially configured Linux machines.

An article on different sleep modes.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/what-is-hybrid-sleep-and-differences-with-basic-sleep-mode-in-vista/

Quote:

(That's mine on the right.)

IOW, the screenshot on the right is from my computer.
And the shot on the left is just one I found to see what it might look like.

Mine does not show that mode.
Don't know that I've done anything to cause it to show or not?

BIOS settings, or hardware that doesn't support Hybrid sleep states.

BIOS defaulted to S1, so that's where it was.

Changed it to S3, & now that Hybrid mode is available (& looks to be the default in W7 - so "Hibernate" no longer displays, only "Sleep" <in the (heh) Start menu>.

(Why do you use the Start menu to Stop the computer?)


Resuming from Sleep is much faster (a couple seconds) compared to resuming from Hibernation (though the wake-up time is immaterial to me).

In Sleep my case power light blinks (there was a BIOS option, I'll have to see what it does) & the LED on my keyboard remains lit.

Quote:

there was a BIOS option, I'll have to see what it does

There were two settings you could select in the BIOS.
I didn't really understand the meaning of either (they read similarly in <"BIOS speak">).
Changing from one to another, I saw no difference.

> I like to see Windows get rebooted properly, often.
> Windows runs like crap
> and eventually something will get corrupted if it doesn't get proper reboots often

Again, not my experience.
Can't say I've experience corruption.

Windows may run like crap at times, but that is more likely due to all the crap they put in Windows. And if nothing else, a Logout/log back in usually more then sufficient.

How do you disable Hibernation???

Thanks.
Fred

P.S. Never mind. Found it.

(Hmmm. I had meant to include a link to my other thread where I had screenshots, but forgot ... Thinking now, I'll just duplicate them here.)

Oh well, link: http://www.pcqanda.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=2&topic_id=537642

And shots:

This is what I've decided on, so far.

A C: of 180 GB.
An E: (my OS) of 36 GB including 9 GB hiberfil.sys & a 12 GB pagefile.sys.

The rest, I'll partition further a bit later.



Enlarged E: from 18 to 36 GB.

Got rid of G: (which was my original x64 install, & when booted into that was known as C: ), merging that back into C:.

And also enlarged C: from (what was originally, before creating <the original> partition for x64) 160 GB to 180 GB.

And I now only have the single W7 x64 OS installed.


I was thinking, & would have liked to have put WinXP on C: but for whatever reason (& it has always been the case on this computer), it would not install, could not see my HDDs? (Perhaps related to AHCI?)

"Advanced Host Controller Interface"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface

Anyhow, I may decide to install W7 x86 into C: at some point?

Yep, AHCI mode is unknown by Windows XP setup (unless an OEM has slipstreamed drivers). You will either have to press F6 and supply drivers (connect a USB floppy if you don't have one) or put the controllers in IDE mode, do your Windows XP install, install chipset/storage drivers and change it back to AHCI.

Also yes, Windows 7 should be smart enough to not replace the 64 bit bootloader if you choose to install the x86 version on C (Don't format it, if the boot directory is there rather than a separate hidden partition though)

Quote:

I was thinking, & would have liked to have put WinXP on C: but for whatever reason (& it has always been the case on this computer), it would not install, could not see my HDDs? (Perhaps related to AHCI?)

AHCI was enabled in the BIOS.

So ...

Should I leave well enough alone?

Or should I set it to IDE & install XP, then set it back to AHCI? (Or am I going to need drivers regardless? Would have to look back <in the forum> but pretty sure was able to go in/out of AHCI without issue?)

(And then I'd have to figure out how to get W7 working again?)

Or should I install W7 x86 into C:? W7 really does nothing for me at all. Though having a second OS to be able to boot into does give a bit of piece of mind - or false hope :clap:.

I thought I replied to this yesterday, but I must have gotten side tracked without submitting.

The very best way to do it is to plan it all ahead of time and install XP first, to drive C. You could then install chipset/storage drivers and enable AHCI in the bios again.

Then, when you install Windows 7 to another partition, it's going to install its own boot loader, and preserve the Windows XP boot loader and Windows XP will boot from an entry in the Windows 7 boot loader menu.

Doing it after the fact, may require you to repair the Windows 7 boot loader afterwards, but then it should be fine.

If you do change the SATA controller mode, try not to boot Windows 7 until after you've changed it back just to be on the safe side. Not only will it blue screen if you forget (Vista/7 don't probe for disk controllers during boot anymore) but I have seen it still blue screen after changing it back. It shouldn't be that way, but it's happened.

Leaving well enough alone is also an option :-)

> I thought I replied to this yesterday, but I must have gotten side tracked without submitting.

I think the board farted.
I have two posts here from yesterday. The first one I "entered" was this one about AHCI.
Right after that, I "posted" the post on hibernate/sleep (S1/S3).
When I actually looked, neither post showed up.
Was able to get the latter posts text from Back-arrow history in the browser, so copied that, opened the topic again, pasted the reply, posted - verified it displayed, it did.
But my original post on AHCI was gone by that point, so I had to recreate it.


> best way to do it is to plan it all ahead of time and install XP first

Right.
But since it would be after the fact now ... Actually reinstalling W7 would be straight forward & quick, but ...


> Then, when you install Windows 7 to another partition, it's going to install its own boot loader, and preserve the
> Windows XP boot loader and Windows XP will boot from an entry in the Windows 7 boot loader menu.

Right.


> after the fact, may require you to repair the Windows 7 boot loader afterwards, but then it should be fine.

My thoughts too.


> If you do change the SATA controller mode, try not to boot Windows 7 until after you've changed it back just to be on the safe side.

Right. The only way I would attempt it.


> Leaving well enough alone is also an option.

I'll kick it around. You'll know if/when I do :-).

I'm pretty sure I didn't complete my post, I don't remember doing it. (I remember forgetting after the fact)

It's something I started to type and had a bunch of other tabs with stuff going on. I closed the browser with multiple tabs open and went to Windows and got lost in Skyrim.

Came across this utility that may be helpful for those with insomnia:


"PassMark Sleeper"
http://www.passmark.com/products/sleeper.htm

Sleeper is a small utility program developed by PassMark Software to help test the ability of PC systems to enter and recover from sleep and hibernation. It has been designed to work with PassMark BurnInTest but will also work with 3rd party applications. Sleeper allows you to,

* Put a PC into any sleep state (S1, S2, S3) supported by the system
* Place your PC into hibernation (S4)
* Wake the computer after a specified period of time.
* Put a PC to sleep or hibernation from the command line
* Force the PC into the requested sleep state
* Cycle through all sleep states or just all states supported by the system
* Launch Sleeper from BurnInTest scripts to test sleep states between test runs.
* Display the supported sleep states