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Windows 7 and Pagefile/Hibernation File use... Free up space on system volume!


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Windows 7 and Pagefile/Hibernation File use... Free up space on system volume!

Posted 08-07-2012 at 05:11 PM by DarkHoodness
Updated 08-07-2012 at 05:14 PM by DarkHoodness
Some of you may learn from this or find it useful.

When I bought this computer I only allocated 40 GB to my system drive. Big mistake, and I've had to juggle system files a lot, but I've gotten by with it... Until today.

This week, I decided to upgrade - One upgrade was to double the size of my RAM. When booting it up after, I immediately found that my system volume was suddenly full. Disk cleanup only freed a gig, and the file sizes on the drive only added up to half the size of the volume according to windows explorer... There was something that explorer wasn't telling me.

After doing some research and downloading TreeSize, it revealed two files I didn't know about: pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys, both of which were the size of my new amount of RAM. Pagefile is self explanatory, Hiberfil.sys is where the system temporarily stores memory during hibernation - Useless if you never hibernate your PC.

Instructions on how to disable the hibernate function can be found here if you need more space on your system volume.

Yay, computing.
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Nepsotic's Avatar
How big? Exactly are these files,
Posted 08-07-2012 at 06:49 PM by Nepsotic

MeechMunchie's Avatar
I'd personally recommend SequoiaView over TreeSize - though the best option is obviously just to use both.

Here's my hard drive - that's pagefile.sys and hiberfile.sys at the right. They don't look like such spacehogs to me. Then again, I've got 930gig to play with, rather than 40.



They're 4GB and 3GB respectively.
Posted 08-07-2012 at 07:02 PM by MeechMunchie
Updated 08-07-2012 at 07:11 PM by MeechMunchie

DarkHoodness's Avatar
Weird... Mine were both 8GB each, the size of my RAM, until I got rid of hiberfil.sys and reduced pagefile.sys down to 1GB with a max allowed size of 4GB (although I'm still reviewing the effects of that... It seems to be fine for now).
Posted 08-08-2012 at 02:43 AM by DarkHoodness
Updated 08-08-2012 at 02:47 AM by DarkHoodness

Nate's Avatar
Yup, this happened to me too. You can also move your pagefile to a different drive, which is advisable if you've got an SSD.
Posted 08-08-2012 at 03:20 AM by Nate

Phylum's Avatar
But when the pf is used isn't it going to be much more efficient if it's reading/writing an SSD?

It would depend on the size of the SSD, but I'm sure it doesn't have to be too big to counteract the loss of space.
Posted 08-08-2012 at 06:08 AM by Phylum

Nate's Avatar
Unless you're using photoshop or video editing software, RAM levels have gotten to the point that pagefiles aren't really used all that much any more.

Also, it's best not to put data with high levels of rewriting on SSDs. Particularly not in a fixed location on the SSD, as happens with the way that Windows stores pagefiles.
Posted 08-08-2012 at 06:16 AM by Nate

 

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