Why is Hibernate off by default in Windows 10?

Question

Hello,

Why is Hibernate off by default in Windows 10? 

Answer 1

Why is Hibernate off by default in Windows 10? 

Hibernation has fallen out of favor - there's nothing wrong with hibernation, and you can certainly use it if you like - but it has fallen out of favor, probably for two reasons:

1- Hibernation and its cousin, Sleep, were originally conceived as power-saving strategies, but today's PC hardware is much more power-efficient; and

2- It often takes a few seconds to resume after hibernation, because the contents of the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys) need to be copied back into RAM.

In addition, and as DaveM121 explained, Microsoft introduced so-called Fast Startup, which includes hibernation, as a method for enabling Windows 10 devices to start in as little as 8 seconds, and Microsoft actually demonstrated that. However, and this is kind of comical, Fast Startup introduced problems of its own, so many users had to disable it.

And if all that isn't enough to deter users from hibernation, the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys) can be multi-gigabyte in size, which is a real problem for devices with small hard drives.

For all these reasons, hibernation is not enabled by default. Nevertheless, you can still use it if you want to.

Answer 2

Hi IrBlueSky

This is because of the Fast Startup feature in Windows 10, it is essentially a new version of the old Windows Hibernation . . .

Windows 10 is counter intuitive, when you shut Windows 10 down, what happens is the state of your RAM is written to the hard drive, then when you start your PC later, that is read back from your hard drive straight into RAM - Fast Startup . . .

When you restart Windows 10, that is when you PC is actually shut down, the contents of RAM are flushed and then your system starts up again with a clean fresh Windows 10

Another thing that is little known is it is very healthy to restart Windows 10 every now and then to flush out your system . . .

Answer 3

So hiberfil.sys is useless and not better is off for default?

Hi IrBlueSky

This is because of the Fast Startup feature in Windows 10, it is essentially a new version of the old Windows Hibernation . . .

Windows 10 is counter intuitive, when you shut Windows 10 down, what happens is the state of your RAM is written to the hard drive, then when you start your PC later, that is read back from your hard drive straight into RAM - Fast Startup . . .

When you restart Windows 10, that is when you PC is actually shut down, the contents of RAM are flushed and then your system starts up again with a clean fresh Windows 10

Another thing that is little known is it is very healthy to restart Windows 10 every now and then to flush out your system . . .

Answer 4

Hi IrBlueSky

If you do not intend using the hibernation function in Windows 10, you cannot manually delete that file, Windows will just recreate that . . .

To delete that file, open a Command Prompt as Administrator

Then, paste this command into Command Prompt and hit Enter

powercfg -h off

Then close Command Prompt and restart (not shut down) your PC . . .