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You should disable Windows Hibernation
Windows has carried a lot of legacy features forward over the years, some of which are useful, others not so much. One of the most overlooked culprits eating away at your storage is Hibernation mode, a power feature that most desktop users simply don’t need. Disabling it is one of the easiest ways to free up gigabytes of disk space instantly, and for many people, there’s no real downside.
What hibernation mode actually does
It's very different to normal Sleep
When you put a modern Windows system to sleep, it keeps power flowing to your RAM, so everything you were working on stays in system memory. Hibernation accomplishes the same thing, but instead of storing the state of your system in RAM, it stores the entire contents of your RAM to the disk, and powers off your system completely. Once you boot your PC back up, you pick up where you left off.
The file that makes this possible is called hiberfil.sys, and it's tucked away on your system drive. Depending on how much you have opened at the time of hibernation, this file can balloon in size to over 32 GB in some cases. For small drives, that's a pretty huge chunk of storage being dedicated to a relatively niche feature, but the problems are deeper than just some extra storage use.
Why it's still around
Backward compatibility and Fast Startup, mainly
Microsoft keeps hibernation around for two main reasons: backward compatibility and Fast Startup. Older versions of Windows and certain BIOS power states depend on it, and on laptops, hibernation can prevent data loss if your battery dies while sleeping, since the contents of your system's state is stored in non-volatile memory. It’s also tied to Fast Startup, which uses a partial form of hibernation to help Windows boot more quickly after shutdown.
Why you should probably disable it
Your system likely doesn't need it
For most users, hibernation just doesn’t justify the space it takes up. Turning it off is a quick way to reclaim a big chunk of your drive, reduce some background overhead, and simplify multi-boot setups. If you have a large amount of RAM, hibernation can easily eat up that amount of RAM in storage, and disabling it completely will free up that space immediately.
Since hibernation was developed and made in an era of spinning platter drives, there was no consideration made to how it would put wear on SSDs. Every time you hibernate, Windows writes your entire memory state to disk, and on SSDs, that’s a lot of unnecessary writes over time for something most people rarely need. It’s not catastrophic, but it’s avoidable wear that adds up.
Additionally, if you dual-boot Windows and Linux, hibernation can lock the Windows partition in a suspended state. This prevents Linux from safely mounting NTFS drives, sometimes even leading to data corruption. Disabling hibernation will stop that from happening entirely.
If you're on a desktop system with stable power and a large amount of system memory, there's little benefit to keeping hibernation on. Turning it off is very simple. Open Command Prompt as administrator, and run the command powercfg /hibernate off. You can turn it back on at any time by using the same command with the argument on.
It can be useful
You might want it enabled in some situations
There are, however, a few cases where keeping hibernation on makes sense. Laptops and tablets that are frequently used on battery power can still benefit from it, since hibernation ensures you won’t lose your open apps and documents if the battery runs out while the system is asleep. Users who like the idea of Fast Startup may also prefer to keep it, although the difference in boot time on modern SSD-based systems is marginal at best.
Most people don't need hibernation
Hibernation made sense in the era of mechanical hard drives, small amounts of RAM, and relatively long startup times. It was a useful way to bridge the gap between shutdown and sleep before SSDs existed. But in 2025, its usefulness has mostly evaporated, and it's a legacy feature for a reason. Today’s systems can resume from sleep in seconds, store massive amounts of memory, and boot Windows faster than ever without needing hibernation’s outdated shortcut.
Disabling it means no massive hidden file eating away at your SSD, fewer compatibility issues with Linux or multi-boot setups, and a slightly cleaner, faster shutdown sequence. It’s one of the rare system tweaks that’s both simple and genuinely beneficial.