Hiberfil.sys O Que E
There’s a large hidden file on my disk that’s taking up a bunch of space called pagefile.sys. What is pagefile.sys?
Assuming it’s something I need, can I move it to another drive?Pagefile.sys is your Windows swap file. When the applications you’re running on your computer end up needing more than you actually have, Windows will start shuffling things around and use your as “virtual”. At the sometimes high cost of speed (your hard disk, and thus virtual memory, is much slower than actual RAM) you avoid getting an out of memory error.Pagefile.sys is the area that Windows sets aside for that.And yes, you can move it. In fact, if you have more than one drive installed on your machine and your system uses virtual memory often, moving it can result in a performance boost.
Become a and go ad-free! Pagefile.sysWhen Windows creates pagefile.sys it typically makes it a “large” size – usually the size of RAM installed on your machine. For example on the machine I’m using now I have 8 gigabytes of RAM, and sure enough:C: dir /a:h 06:07 AM 8,589,008,896 pagefile.sys(In the Windows command, “dir” lists the directory contents, and “/a:h” indicates that it should list files whose attributes include hidden.)Particularly if you never use the paging file, that’s space wasted.In addition, if you have an additional hard drive installed in your machine it can often be helpful to place the paging file on a different drive.
Not only does this free up space on “C:”, but it can reduce hard disk contention caused by heavy use of C: by offloading some of the activity to a different drive.Caveats. It needs to be a different physical drive. Moving the paging file to a different on the same drive will probably just slow things down further as the disk heads on that drive need to move further as they access information from the original drive and the new location of the paging file.
It should not be on a USB (or Firewire) external drive. Not only are these interfaces often too slow to positively impact performance, accidentally pulling the cable will crash your machine.
It should not be a flash drive. Flash memory wears out, and heavy swap file usage can wear out flash memory exceptionally quickly.But if you have a second, internal drive, then moving pagefile.sys is very easy. Hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys are two Windows system files that support two very important features: hibernation and virtual memory. Pagefile.sys is the 'paging file', or system file, that contains Windows' virtual memory.
You can remove it - if you understand the ramifications. How much a swap file gets used depends on how much RAM your computer has, and what's running on it at any given time. Knowing that will also help you decide where to place the file. The default settings for virtual memory are typically good enough for most. Tweaking virtual memory settings depends on your computer and what you do with it.Posted: July 3, 2010in:Shortlink. New Here?Let me suggest my to get you started.Of course I strongly recommend you - there's a ton of information just waiting for you.Finally, if you just can't find what you're looking for,! Leo Who?I'm and I've been playing with computers since I took a required programming class in 1976.
I spent over 18 years as a software engineer at Microsoft, and after 'retiring' in 2001 I started in 2003 as a place to help you find answers and become more confident using this amazing technology at our fingertips. Just an extra note, you can look up the speed of each internal drive you have. If your C drive is faster, keep it on the C drive. If your other internal drive is faster, of course you would want to use that one. Also, it is good to set up Windows to clear the paging file when it shuts down, but that is another discussion entirely that perhaps could be the making of another article here. Also, if you have a lot of RAM and a good processor, turning the paging file off is your best option option.
DO NOT turn off the paging file on an older computer with very little RAM or slower processor. Also, decreasing the paging file on an older or slower computer may force Windows to increase the paging file when you reboot, and that means you will be staring at a screen for a very long time before you get into Windows again. That is because when Windows has to increase the paging file itself it takes its sweet time. @RobertBeen reading about this more and found this on Microsoft’s site:The optimal solution is to create one paging file that is stored on the boot partition, and then create one paging file on another partition that is less frequently accessed on a different physical hard disk if a different physical hard disk is available. Additionally, it is optimal to create the second paging file so that it exists on its own partition, with no data or operating-system-specific files. By design, Windows uses the paging file on the less frequently accessed partition over the paging file on the more heavily accessed boot partition.
An internal algorithm is used to determine which paging file to use for virtual memory management. Leo,Thanks for this and your other great articles. You really have a gift for writing with clarity and structuring your comments in a way that the information can easily be understood and followed.I carefully followed your bulleted steps and was able to Set the drive (F:) on which I want the pagefile.sys to reside to System Managed Size. However, after selecting its current location (C:) and clicking No Paging File, when I then clicked the Set button, I got a System Properties pop-up saying:“If you disable the paging file or set the initial size to less than 800 MB and a system error occurs, Windows might not record details that could help identify the problem.
Thanks for the reply Leo.After completing the steps and restarting my computer, I discovered in Windows Explorer that the amount of free space on my C drive had not changed. It still showed 18.5 GB free of 119 GB which is what it was before trying to remove the pagefile.sys file.I went back into the Virtual Memory settings (C: Properties Advanced system settings Advanced tab Performance:Settings Advanced tab Virtual memory:Change Virtual Memory settings) where I found that the “Paging file size for each drive” settings were as I had left them.
In other words:C:NoneE:NoneF:System managedG:NoneI cannot see the pagefile.sys file in Windows Explorer so I used TreeSize Free to examine the folders and files in the above drives. I found the following:C:Filespagefile.sys — present (16.4 GB)E: (none)F:Filespagefile.sys — present (16.4 GB)G: (none)So that explains why no additional space has been freed up on Drive C but I don’t understand how/why the file is still present on Drive C, since it displays “None” in the Virtual Memory settings.Many thanks. Leo,Please, I have a doubt and I think you can help me:I tried to manage my pagefile of my XP to the drive D, I have C and D. But, after the reboot, I noticed that my drive D had even less space than before and there are two pagefile on my partitioned HD, one on C and the other on D, and then I turned it back to the way it was, on C, but the pagefile on D is still there, occupying 1,44GB there. Could I delete it or do my HD need two pagefiles? That second pagefile on D was not to be there, right? What can I do now?
If you can help me with this, mate, I thank you in advance.Regards,Samuel. Hi, Leo.Admirable how clear and clever responses you post. Thanks for the passion.On my office laptop i have just one disk.The it guys as a policy install McAfee Antivirus(tm) and lots of things and on top of that McAfee End Point encription(tm), and on top of that the policies for the antivirus may not changed and those keep all day slowing down the computer with scans that never end and restart from scratch if i reboot.So in two words, the antivirus keeps running all day and the encrypter keeps encrypting everything that is written to the disk and decrypting everything read from the disk.I know how to counter-fight some things. One that i know to work is to keep pagefile.sys at (sufficient) fixed size (1,5 times the size for RAM when it’s bigger than 2GB) and near the start of the disk.This avoids it from fragmentation and speed up writes and reads of VM. With Defraggler i defragment my disk and send all the files smaller than 5MB to the end of the file. Then i erase the pagefile.sys file and recreate.Then defragment again specifying that large files (375MB) stay at the end of the disk while smaller ones return back to the beginning of the disk, but —after— the pagefile.sys file 🙂This basically will rise up the position of this special file in the disk. But dumb Windows XP now is not creating a file with the size i need (instead much more smaller) and is putting it near the middle of the disk.After all this explanation, my question is: How may i move the pagefile.sys to the beginning of the free space on the disk without reinstall Windows?
Using a second a second disk is not an option. The Microsoft(tm) Pagedefrag utility does not help too much if the file is not fragmented.Thanks in advance. Hi Leo,Thanks so much for the info on the ‘virtual memory’ (page files) you offered and I did what you said and my PC is running just GREAT. Now I understand the importance of these files and why it can be beneficial to have them stored on an alternative drive other than ‘C’. That way my ‘C’ drive won’t get bogged down and the ‘D’ drive can take care of these files with no hassle at all. One question, are these files later stored as ‘temp files’ or does WINS 7 automatically delete them when ‘virtual memory’ is needed again?
Again, thanks for your time. It is appreciated.George Melendez. Dear Leo, your article on the paging file problem really solved a huge issue for me. For days i had been downloading file trackers, killdisks etc to no avail, then i found your post. Thank you ever so much.unfortunately i do have a problem. The reason i had been working on the paging file problem was i needed to free my d drive so i can merge with my c drive.
The c drive being the main drive. The page.sys file was on the d drive and i was hoping after removing it i could format and merge with the c. I was able to format the d but the c is not giving me the option to “extend partition”. Is there anyway you can help me? I moved the page.sys file to the e drive. Is this affecting the process?
Does the page.sys file have to be on the c drive? (theres no more space on the c drive and i havent downloaded or installed anything that can free the 1.8g i need to transfer the pagesys file onto the c with.i bought the laptop with windows 7 already configured on it. The c drive was, oddly enough given only 25g space while the other three drives were broken into roughly 90g each. I have merged the e and f drives now making them e but the problem is with merging the c and d. C doesnt give the option i stated above.i am on the verge of reinstalling windows 7 but i am pretty sure this can be done without reinstalling. Please help me. I hope your reply will hit my mail ad too.
Thanks so much for all already and in advance too.sys is an extension which stands for System. The extension of a file name doesn’t have any special properties in and of itself. It is used as an identifier. In most cases, they can be associated with a specific program, so that when you double click on the file, it is automatically opened.
This isn’t the case with.sys files which are generally used by Windows and other programs for various purposes. Pagefile.sys as the article states is to hold information that doesn’t fit in RAM. Hiberfil.sys stores the entire contents of RAM when the computer is place in hibernation mode. Config.sys was a file in DOS which contained user settings for the OS.
So you see, it can be used for different kinds of things. Other than an a general naming convention, there is no real difference between a.txt file and a.sys file.
For example, I could rename a photograph with a.sys extension. If I double click on it, Windows would give me a message that it doesn’t know how to open it and offer to allow me to associate a program with it (unless somehow someone or some program has already don that). As I mentioned earlier, the extension in and of itself has no special properties other than the fact that you can associate it with a program that will open it when you double click on it. Thank you so much for the information in the article. More than just how to steps. I was interested to know about flash drives wearing out. Is this still the case?I assume this is the same tech used in the SSDs that are gaining so much popularity.
I have a convertible laptop with a 60GB ssd in the tablet and a 500GB hdd in the keyboard dock. Naturally space on C: has become an issue. Moving pictures and vids of my kids to the hdd has left me with 14GB free on C.
Most of the time tablet remains docked. But on occasion it may become undocked so moving the pagefile is not a good option. Plus I do not know the actual data connection so there may not be performance advantage like you mentioned.
But how concerned should I be with the possible failure of my ssd if it is doing all the program and pagefile and hiberfil work?Is it save to move the hiberfil to the dock drive in my system?. SSDs are essentially a fast high quality kind of flash memory. SSDs have been in use for a number of years, and I haven’t heard of any large numbers of SSD failures.
Under normal use it wouldn’t be a problem. As for the swap drive, it should be on the SSD if at all possible as a swap drive on an HD is often a factor in a computer running slow. It applies to a much lesser degree to the hiberfil because that is only written to when putting the machine to sleep. And the hiberfil doesn’t constantly write to the drive making wear and tear a very small issue. As I said, if SSDs wearing out were a common problem, you’d be hearing a lot about those failures.
Just be sure to back up. Leo, in the article you mentioned the need to uncheck the “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” setting before changing/moving the pagefile.sys to another drive. After that is done, do you need to re-enable that box again? That was not mentioned anywhere.Also, I have a small SSD with the operating system (C:) and a rather large (1TB) HDD. I would like to put the pagefile.sys which is about 2.5GB on the large HDD. Is that OK or is that not advisable because the HDD is slower than the SSD? This is the impression I get from the answer of Mark Jacobs (Team Leo) from March 30, 2016.
I’d leave it off. I believe turning it back on will re-create a paging file on your original location. HD is fine by the time you need a paging file your system fill be slowish to begin with (being low on RAM, which is when the paging file most frequently kicks in). I like the idea of keeping it off the SSD, just for longevity. Though you may want to experiment — SSDs are lasting longer than originally, and you may find that putting it on the SSD is faster for however it is you use your computer. There’s no single answer here.
As part of one of Samsung’s power recommendations, I reduced the page file to a minimum of 200MB & max of 1,024MB, later would lower the latter to 800MB. Works fine, of course there’s 20GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM installed in the system, could likely get away with disabling the pagefile.It kind of baffles me (at times) when I get a ‘low memory’ popup when not even half of the 20GB is used. Same with two 32GB systems.
Hiberfil.sys O Que E Folclore
Having a smaller pagefile forces the RAM to do what it’s supposed to, it’s duty. Why have so much RAM & memory operations are performed on a SSD or HDD? Am not sure if a Microsoft engineer could answer the question, what I do know is the same doesn’t happen when running Linux Mint 19 on the same machines.
Even with 25+ pages of Google Chrome tabs open, it’s rare to use 6GB, have yet to see it using 8GB.Considering in 2018 that most any decent computer has 8GB RAM installed (needed for Windows 10 bloat), these are items still of great relevance. It’s simply recommended to keep pagefile low when running any brand of SSD & FastBoot/Hibernation disabled (open cmd as Administrator & type powercfg -f off & this allows for a normal shutdown, saving wear & tear on the computer. Those who wants or needs to open a computer & not lose their spot can still use sleep. Hibernation is a SSD killer, creating massive writes every time, this includes using FastBoot.Only use the recommended settings if running a HDD only system, and there’s no SSD being used as a cache drive. FastBoot is a gimmick to make consumers think that low cost Windows computers ‘boots’ fast & if on a HDD only system, is OK to use. However this being 2018 & now with many on NVMe type SSD, stay away from these old school practices, or be prepared to replace these expensive drives long before needed. In an ideal world, these type of drives, as well as the 2.5″ variant, should last for the life of the machine.
If running Windows 10, beware when each OS upgrades to a newer one, will have to change settings again. Microsoft has no respect for what we want, only what they want to feed us. If so, these settings created would be left untouched.Bottom line, physical RAM is the fastest storage one has, better to force the machine to use it & pagefile less. Before commenting please:. Read the article.
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Become a and go ad-free! Hiberfil.sysHiberfil.sys, if present, lives in the of your system drive (typically C:). It may be present if your hardware supports hibernation, and is the support file for that feature.
When your system goes into hibernation, Windows writes a complete copy of to the file hiberfil.sys. When you turn the computer back on, the boot loader notices the file has been placed into hibernation, and instead of booting Windows, it simply reloads this single file back into RAM.The file is normally inaccessible. You can release Window’s hold on the file by turning off hibernation.Run a Windows Command Prompt as Administrator (right-click on a shortcut to Windows Command Prompt and click Run as Administrator). In that command prompt, type: powercfg /hibernate offHiberfil.sys should now either be gone or you should be able to delete it yourself.You’ll no longer be able to place your machine into hibernation. You can turn it back on again by replacing the “off” with “on” in the command above. Pagefile.sysI’ve actually discussed before. It’s the system paging file — your, or “swap file”.
It’s where Windows “swaps out” contents to make room for other things when the combination of software you’re running requires more RAM than you actually have.Pagefile.sys is locked by the system as long as you have virtual memory enabled. That’s also a clue as to one way to get rid of it: turn off virtual memory.Or, if you prefer, move it to another drive.In Windows 7, click on the Start menu, right-click on Computer, and click on Properties. In Windows 10, right-click on the Start menu, click on System, and scroll down the right-hand pane, if needed, to expose and click on System info.Then, in either version, click on Advanced System Settings.
In the Performance section, click on the Settings button, on the Advanced tab, and finally on the Change button within the section. In the resulting dialog, you may also need to uncheck “ Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” to be able to take control of settings yourself.As you can see, you can select the size of the virtual memory file to be used per drive. I currently have “No paging file” on my C: drive, and there is no pagefile.sys there.If you want no paging file at all, simply make sure “ No paging file” is set for all drives.
You may need to reboot, but after that, pagefile.sys will either be gone or can be deleted. Running with no VMWhen you run with no virtual memory, it means that if your applications require more memory than you actually have installed, they will fail. If you have lots of RAM, that may not be a problem, but if you have little RAM and/or run lots of programs at the same time, you probably want a paging file.One performance improvement is to move the paging file to another drive. Since Windows uses the system drive C: heavily, it’s often convenient to move the paging file to another drive. Simply set the size of the drive on C: to “No paging file” and then set the paging file on another drive to be “System managed size”.Important: make sure the drive holding the paging file is a fast drive. Moving the paging file to an external USB drive, for example, while possible, may result in a very slow system. The paging file should only be placed on internal drives.In general, unless you’re battling some kind of performance or space issue, I recommend leaving the virtual memory and paging file options set to their defaults.
If you've added a hard drive to your system you can move pagefile.sys to free up space on your original drive and speed up your system. Pagefile.sys is the 'paging file', or system file, that contains Windows' virtual memory. You can remove it - if you understand the ramifications. How much a swap file gets used depends on how much RAM your computer has, and what's running on it at any given time.
Knowing that will also help you decide where to place the file. Before giving away a machine or returning a loaner, it's important to remove personal information from it.
That's both harder and easier than you think.Posted: October 19, 2017in:This is a major update to an article originally posted October 8, 2009Shortlink. New Here?Let me suggest my to get you started.Of course I strongly recommend you - there's a ton of information just waiting for you.Finally, if you just can't find what you're looking for,! Leo Who?I'm and I've been playing with computers since I took a required programming class in 1976. I spent over 18 years as a software engineer at Microsoft, and after 'retiring' in 2001 I started in 2003 as a place to help you find answers and become more confident using this amazing technology at our fingertips. Just to clarify a point. When Leo refers to another “drive” he means a second physical internal hard drive.
He does not simply mean another drive letter.I say this because drive letters can be separate partitions on a single hard disk and there are recommendations online about putting the paging/swap file in its own partition. I don’t think this is a good idea as it just increases the distance the r/w heads have to move.Windows on hard disk 1 and the page/swap file on hard disk 2 should give you the best possible performance.
Needless to say, laptop users need not apply. I, and most Power Users, strongly reccommend against no virtual memory. First, It will cause your RAM use to jump to nearly full when running, say, 3 IEs with 3 windows open each. Then, if an application needs more memory, it may overwrite its assigned memory with the results being anything form an application crash to the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD). Of course, if you have lots of RAM installed it may never happen. However, if (as sometimes happens) microsoft puts out an update that is buggy, it may use all you memory before you computer is done stating up, with the results being your system unable to load.
(This actually happened to my friend, we had to boot into the WRC, ugh. So, the bottom line is: don’t do it.
You are inviting trouble. I’ve found that it’s almost, if not totally, impossible to run without any virtual memory allocated.One other tweak I like to do is to change the virtual memory max and min values to be the same. 10, 20 years ago Hard Drives were measured in 10’s and 100’s of Mega, not Giga bytes. Back then it made economic sense to minimize use of relatively expensive disk space.
So Windows was allowed to expand and shrink the swap file within the range specified. These days with common HD in laptops measuring 100’s GB assigning 1-4GB to swap file is not as significant.By setting definition of swap file to a constant size Windows creates it once and leaves it.
After you have run an competent Defrag tool in a boot time defrag a couple of times it will eventually consolidate the swap file into a single contiguous file (or at most a few large fragments). No longer will growth and shrinkage of swap file contribute to fragmentation of data files or application files during new app installs.