Windows 10: Specify Hiberfile Type as Full or Reduced in Windows 10

How to: Specify Hiberfile Type as Full or Reduced in Windows 10

How to Specify Hiberfile Type as Full or Reduced in Windows 10


Information Hibernation files are used for hybrid sleep, fast startup, and standard hibernation (described earlier). There are two types, differentiated by size, a full and reduced size hibernation file. Only fast startup can use a reduced hibernation file.

[table][tr][td]Hibernation file type[/td] [td]hiberfil.sys default size[/td] [td]Supports[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Full[/td] [td]40% of physical memory[/td] [td]hibernate, hybrid sleep, fast startup[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Reduced[/td] [td]20% of physical memory[/td] [td]fast startup[/td] [/tr] [/table]

Hibernate is a power-saving S4 state designed primarily for laptops, and might not be available for all PCs (PCs with InstantGo don't have the hibernate option). While sleep puts your work and settings in memory and draws a small amount of power, hibernation puts your full current state (ex: open documents and programs) on your hard disk to the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys), and then turns off your computer. Hibernate uses less power than sleep and when you start up the PC again, you’re back to where you left off (though not as fast as sleep). Use hibernation when you know that you won't use your laptop or tablet for an extended period and won't have an opportunity to charge the battery during that time.

Hybrid sleep is a special state that's a combination of the S1-S3 sleep and S4 hibernation states, it's when a system uses a hibernation file with S1-S3. It's only available on some systems. When enabled, the system writes a hibernation file but enters a higher-powered sleep state. If power is lost while the system is sleeping, the system wakes from hibernation, which takes longer but restores the user's system state.

Fast startup (aka: hiberboot, hybrid boot, or hybrid shutdown) is turned on by default in Windows and is a setting that helps your PC start up faster after shutdown. Even faster than hibernate. Windows does this by saving an image of the Windows kernel and loaded drivers to the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) upon shutdown so when you start your PC again, Windows simply loads the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) into memory to resume your PC instead of restarting it.

Fast startup requires that hibernate be enabled. If you only want to use fast startup and don't plan on using hibernate, then you can specify the hiberfile type as reduced to significantly reduce the size of the hiberfile (C:\hiberfil.sys) to about half of its full size.


This tutorial will show you how to specify the desired hiberfile type to be reduced or full in Windows 10.



Note Hiberfile type:

Full = Supports being able to enable power menu.

Reduced = Only supports being able to turn on power menu.




Here's How:

1. Open an elevated command prompt.

2. Do step 3 (full) or step 4 (reduced) below for what you would like to do.


3. To Specify Hiberfile Type as Full
NOTE: This is the default setting.
A) Copy and paste the command below into the elevated command prompt, press Enter, and go to step 5 below. (see screenshot below)

*Arrow powercfg /h /type full





4. To Specify Hiberfile Type as Reduced
A) Copy and paste the command below into the elevated command prompt, press Enter, and go to step 5 below. (see screenshot below)

*Arrow powercfg /h /type reduced



Note If the hibernation file is set to a custom size greater than 40%, then the command will return a The parameter is incorrect error. You must first set the size of the file to zero with the command below, then retry changing the hibernation file type to reduced.

*Arrow powercfg /h /size 0







5. When finished, you can close the elevated command prompt if you like.



That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 10
• How to Add or Remove Hibernate from Power menu in Windows 10
• How to Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 10
• How to Check if Last Boot was from Fast Startup, Full Shutdown, or Hibernate
• How to Enable or Disable Windows To Go Workspace using Hibernate on Windows 10 PC

:)

 

Windows 10 gets stuck booting with some laptop configurations if hibernation is enabled. Please make it easy to disable hibernation

Open Administrator Command Prompt:

• powercfg /H OFF <-- this will eliminate all hibernation types
• powercfg /H REDUCED <-- this allows for a smaller hiberfil.sys, which only allows for Fast Startup.
• powercfg /H /? <-- explains options

powercfg /h /?

POWERCFG /HIBERNATE <ON|OFF>
POWERCFG /HIBERNATE /SIZE <PERCENT_SIZE>
POWERCFG /HIBERNATE /TYPE <REDUCED|FULL>
Alias:

POWERCFG /H
Description:

Enables/disables the hibernate feature or sets the hiberfile size.
Parameter List:

<ON|OFF> Enables/disables the hibernate feature.
/SIZE <PERCENT_SIZE> Specifies the desired hiberfile size as a percentage

of the total memory size. The default size cannot be

smaller than 40. This parameter will also cause

hibernate to be enabled.
/TYPE <REDUCED|FULL> Specifies the desired hiberfile type. A reduced

hiberfile only supports hiberboot.
Examples:

POWERCFG /HIBERNATE OFF
POWERCFG /HIBERNATE /SIZE 100
POWERCFG /HIBERNATE /TYPE REDUCED

Also, in Settings - Power & sleep - Additional power settings you can
Choose what the power button does.

There you can uncheck Turn on fast startup. That might eliminate this issue without disabling hibernation, if full hibernation actually still works well for you. You may just have one hardware component that is not resuming from sleep state
properly, but that can be hard to track down.

 

Windows Defender Error

Not only Windows Defender, but many many things leave something in the
hiberfil.sys. This file is used in Hibernation. If you want to free up some space, disable hibernation. See these:

What Is hiberfil.sys and How Do I Delete It?

Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 10

Specify Hiberfile Type as Full or Reduced in Windows 10

Anyways, happy your problem is solved.

Prashant Kumar

 

Great for the people with 120GB SSDs and smaller*Smile

 

Is the default size in W 10 still 75% ?
I asked about it here, because i saw a change:
Solved Did the default Hibernate file size change for Win 10 ? - Windows 10 Forums

If my install is not working as it should, i'll do another clean install *Shock

 

Hey David, *Smile

It seems to still be 75%. I have 16 GB of RAM on my laptop, and the hiberfil.sys file shows as 12.7 GB in size. This is roughly 75% + what Fast Startup may use.

 

This is interesting, because I have just clean installed Windows 10 Pro 64-bit on my laptop. I have the pagefile set to system managed, if that makes a difference.
I have 16GB of RAM, but the hiberfil.sys size when set to type Full is only 6.36 GB (6,831,280,128 bytes), and when it is set to type Reduced, it is only 3.18 GB (3,415,638,016 bytes). I have fast startup enabled, too.

What's interesting is that type Reduced halves the size of hiberfil.sys, but the size under type Full is only 40% of the physical RAM.
Anybody have an idea why this is happening?

 

Injust, *Smile

Not sure why it's that way for you, but if you like, you can use the command below in an elevated command prompt to set your hiberfil.sys file to 75%.

powercfg -h -size 75

Hibernate - Change Size of hiberfil.sys File - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

I just ran that right now, the file changed to 75% of my RAM, but now when I run
Code: powercfg /h /type reduced[/quote] It returns: The parameter is incorrect.

But powercfg /h /type full works fine.

EDIT: Never mind. Set it to 1% then back to 100% and the reduced type command works *Confused

 

I also found this on my desktop PC - also with 16GB of RAM. Maybe there is a relation to the amount of RAM installed and beyond a threshold, it reduces the ratio to installed RAM.

 

I have 6 GB RAM and the default size for me was 40%.
Brink has 16 GB and the default size for him is 75%.

 

From what I see, the minimum full type hiberfile size is 40% of the installed physical memory. Even if you set it to any percentage lower than that, it will still set itself to 40%.
But if you use the reduced type hiberfile setting, it can go as low as 20%. At least this is true on my device.

 

Hiberfile works the same way for me in Win 10.
It seems some people such as Shawn get a default 75% size.
I didn't know if it was something buggy with my Win 10 install, but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one seeing this change from previous Win versions.

So far everything else is working without issues for me in Win 10, so i'm not real concerned with this "odd change".
I changed my Win 10 hiberfile size to 75%, as that has always worked reliably for me in Win 7 and Win 8.1.

 

When my laptop was Windows 8.1 it had fast startup as the default without any intervention from me. Since upgrading to Windows 10 fast startup disappeared and it was noticeably slower to boot. Thanks to various threads in Ten Forums I've hopefully fixed this.

 

Hello Vadek, and welcome to Ten Forums. *Smile