Windows Server 2008 VM: Hiberfil.sys is filling up Disk Space

This blog post is only valid for “Windows Server 2008” Release 1.

If you run Windows Server 2008 server in VM environment, you should know the following things.

1. Hibernation feature is ENABLED by default in Windows Server 2008
2. There are no GUI settings to turn hibernation off
3. “hiberfil.sys” takes as much as your memory size, sitting in C:\ and wasting precious disk space in VM

I found out little lately that my Windows Server VMs were running out disk space and took a while to figure out what’s happening.

Solution:

You can disable the hibernation feature by command line tools. There is two step process:

1. Open command prompt in elevated mode (right click on Command prompt icon and select “Run as Administrator”). Type the following command to disable the hibernation feature.

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

2. Access your servers C: root directory from different computer (\\Servername\c$) and delete “Hiberfil.sys” file. (if you try to delete this file locally on the server, you are in big surprise)

Hey best thing about this solution is NO REBOOT required. :-)