If you have a Windows computer, you may be having an issue with your C drive being eaten up by quite a bit of space. This can be frustrating, especially if you don’t know where the file space is going. In this article, we’ll show you a simple fix to this issue.
First, hit Start and E to bring up a new file explorer. If you open it up, you’ll see a list of files. However, some files may not be visible. If you don’t have a program like Tree Size, you won’t know where the file space is going.
To see all of the files, including the ones that are hidden, head across to View and then click the Options button. Then select View at the very top, scroll down a little bit, and make sure that “Hide protected operating system files” is unchecked. Upon doing this, you should see a whole bunch of new files pop up, including hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys.
What exactly is hiberfil.sys? It’s simply used by Windows when you put your PC into hibernation mode. If you don’t even have hibernation mode enabled, then you can get rid of this file without worrying that it’ll affect other things. However, we can’t simply delete this file as that wouldn’t work.
To get rid of this file, we simply need to turn off hibernation. Press Start, type in cmd, and then make sure you have command prompt highlighted. Then right-click and click “Run as administrator.” After the command prompt window opens up, simply type in “powercfg -h off.” This will turn off hibernation. Hit enter, and after a couple of seconds, the hibernation file is deleted from your PC.
The only other big file that may be slightly unnecessary is the pagefile.sys file. This file is simply more RAM for you to use in your computer when you run out of physical RAM on your physical RAM sticks. If you have a large amount of RAM on your PC, more than enough to run the programs that you use, then you can remove this file or make it a lot smaller.
In the end, the hiberfil.sys file wasn’t actually doing anything for your PC except for taking up space. You probably put it into hibernation mode a very long time ago, and that file has just sat there ever since. By following these steps, you can free up some space on your hard drive and optimize your PC’s performance.