The Mobile Office Blog

Last week I wrote about some of the ways I save space on the Acer Aspire One running Windows 7.  This weekend I did a little digging to find out where the space went and found a cheap, simple tweak to reclaim 1.2 GB of my 8 GB SSD.

Simply using file explorer, I started to review the files on the AAO's SSD.  The first thing I noticed was that the C: Drive had a couple of really large files: pagefile.sys (approx. 1.5 GB) and hiberfil.sys (approx 1.2 GB).  I already knew how to control the page file size and am happy with the system performance, so I knew to leave pagefile.sys alone.  The naming of hiberfil.sys was also pretty logical and I knew that I hadn't yet disabled hibernation in Windows 7.  I also couldn't find a place in Windows to actually turn off the hibernation function. 

A simple Google search for hiberfil.sys and I found my solution!  Hiberfil.sys, simply stated, is the disk image of the RAM that is used by Windows' hibernation functionality.  A few simple steps and I was able to disable the hibernation feature in Windows 7.  After disabling hibernation I now have almost 2.5 GB of free space on my 8 GB SSD, up from 1.3 GB last week.

To sum up the simple way you disable hibernation: enter powercfg.exe -h off at a command prompt and hit enter.  This will disable hibernation and immediately remove the hiberfil.sys file.

Why disable hibernation?  Good question!  The simple answer is that I don't use hibernation.  I never have enough stuff going on on my computer that I need to save it all for later.  I usually just shut the cover on the Aspire One and let it sleep which provides near instant on (about 5 sec.) and uses minimal power (the AAO with the 9-cell battery can sleep for a couple of days with no problems.) If I need to conserve power, I can just turn off the AAO since it turns on in about 30 seconds anyway!

How have you tweaked your Window 7 implementation to reclaim space on your netbook?  Let us know in the comments! 

Image by edanley