Seeking insights from any knowledgeable colleague about Win 10 Hiberfil.sys

[BonzaiDuck]

As I've plastered around in threads at "CPU" and "Memory/Storage," I've upgraded my 2x8 RAM kit of G.SKILLs to 4x8 by adding a second identical 2x8 kit. Success. Happier than a pig in s***. A 30mV increase in default "auto" VCCIO was all it takes.

The reason I did this wasn't any necessity. I've been using Romex PrimoCache for three years now on four different systems including this one (Skylake on a Sabertooth Z170 board). I'd actually agonized over the RAM upgrade option for a couple reasons, including the simple fact that it just isn't necessary. This has been an episode of my ongoing Techno-Lust and Hardware Addiction. So what? I love it!

Apparently with Windows 10, you can reduce the Hiberfil.sys file to below 50% and as low as 20% according to one tech-site or blog. PrimoCache has a feature to unload any caches for hibernation -- or -- your system won't hibernate. So that means I shouldn't worry about the cache or its contents.

I'd like to reduce Hiberfil.sys to a minimum in a policy of reducing writes to my NVMe boot-system drive. Since I have 32GB of RAM, and since I use 12GB to 16GB just for the Primo caching, should I have any problem reducing the Hiberfil.sys to a size of -- say -- 8GB? I think that's what it was when I only had a 2x8=16GB configuration, but it seems to have adjusted itself. Or more accurately, it had been set at 50% under the 16GB setup, and it is now 16GB in size.

Just thought I'd ask. Hibernation is important for me with this system. I think I've had about 5 or 6 BSOD experiences with this system, all occurring within the first couple days after putting it together back in September 2016. After that, I've been able to do fine-tune tweaks raising the CPU speed and adding hardware such that the stress-tests will trap the errors without BSODs or other troublesome things. It's purrrr-feck! Absolutely purr-feck!

 

[R0H1T]

You can;t reduce hiberfile to anything below 50% in my experience, that pretty much disables hibernation, hybrid sleep & only fast startup works. You could try 40% & see if it works for you, hibernation that is.

 

[vailr]

Hibernate feature can be turned off via Admin command prompt:
powercfg -h off

 

[crashtech]

Hibernate feature can be turned off via Admin command prompt:
powercfg -h off

This is what I do. There's little need for hibernation outside of a laptop with a spinner.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I think the minimum percentage of RAM size for Hiberfil.sys differs from Win 7 to Win 10. Win 7 definitely gives you a lower boundary of 50%. Other sources suggested the possibility of 20% as minimum for Win 10, and I think I proved that to myself. But then, the old man's memory is starting to show as a bit flakey.

Two reasons compel me to use the hibernation feature.

First, it's the only way I can let the systems wake up for backup to my Windows server -- as far as I know.

Second, I don't want to leave my systems in sleep-state perpetually. It's a bit harder on the PSUs.

I suppose if I can just set it back to 8GB, I can wait and see what happens then . . .

 

[crashtech]

Now you've got me mildly curious to know if anyone thinks they wore out their PSU with too much Sleep.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Now you've got me mildly curious to know if anyone thinks they wore out their PSU with too much Sleep.

If I was fiddling with computers since 1983, I was -- in my other life -- oriented to software and programming. I'm not an "electronics" guy. But a about 4 years ago, I had this system with a C2D e8400 which I chose to let go into sleep-state for days at a time -- literally. The whole thing flaked out, and we traced it to the PSU -- a Seasonic unit maybe a few years old.

My friend back East in Virginia is an electronics guy. He told me about this -- that long periods of sleep took its toll on a PSU, which has to continue powering RAM without any airflow. His recommendation was to use hibernation after a system has been asleep for a couple hours. So you might set up your system to sleep after three hours and then hibernate after five hours - as an example.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'll go ahead and post this link: " Specify Hiberfile Type as Full or Reduced "

20% only offers "Fast Startup" and requires a "Hybrid Sleep" setting in windows power configuration. I'm not so sure that fills my bill.

So apparently the minimum size is 40%, but that's less than it was for Windows 7, unless I'm mistaken.

I'm re-examining this issue. Our other Windows 7 systems need to be in a state that can be raised by our server nightly for backup, and they have RAM ranging from 8GB to 16.

This Win 10 system has its own Macrium backup configuration which runs automatically even if the system has been turned off past the time when it's scheduled to run.

I just don't want to leave it sleeping for more than four or five hours at a time . . .

 

[crashtech]

I guess my experience has been different, plus many of my PCs are 24/7 anyway. In my experience, though, the power draw in sleep mode is just a few watts, not enough to generate significant heat unless something is wrong. Having a Seasonic fail would send one scrambling to find a cause, however, a defective component can occasionally slip into even the highest quality devices. It could be that you just got unlucky, one might be circumspect about drawing conclusions based on a sample size of 1. But all said, hibernate isn't hurting anything, so I hope you find the right drive use balance you seek.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I guess my experience has been different, plus many of my PCs are 24/7 anyway. In my experience, though, the power draw in sleep mode is just a few watts, not enough to generate significant heat unless something is wrong. Having a Seasonic fail would send one scrambling to find a cause, however, a defective component can occasionally slip into even the highest quality devices. It could be that you just got unlucky, one might be circumspect about drawing conclusions based on a sample size of 1. But all said, hibernate isn't hurting anything, so I hope you find the right drive use balance you seek.

It's the residual anxiety about SSD life. For a 960 Pro, I should relax. But through the process of building my Skylake, there were several wipes and restores. I purchased it in January, and it's logged about 10.1 TBW. That's something like 1.3%.

I can look at it a different way. I've limited my pagefile size to something between 2 and 4GB. I'm untutored as to whether hibernation causes the rewriting of the entire hiberfil.sys or only some fraction of it.

For the NVMe Pro drive, if this were the original Jimmy Stewart "Flight of the Phoenix" movie, it has a lot more than six engine-starting cartridges left.

To tell the truth, this was also a factor in my personal conflicts that delayed doubling my RAM to 32GB.

On observations about top-end PSUs, they don't last forever. I have another system awaiting a new Seasonic replacement because the 850W "Gold" X-series unit is six years old and past its warranty limit. On this very self-same issue, it was getting flaky coming out of hibernation because of the preliminary sleep-state I allowed before hibernating. I discovered that eliminating the sleep-phase before hibernation resolved the problem for the time being.

But it was the PSU slowly going south. That system, doing previous HTPC duty to serve my 24/7 news and movie-viewing habit, had been up and running continuously for five of those last six years, but for maintenance shutdowns.

 

[crashtech]

High-end PSUs ought to have a Hobbs meter, right?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

High-end PSUs ought to have a Hobbs meter, right?

70 years old in October, and learning new things all the time. Now I know what a Hobbs meter is.

With 32 GB of RAM, the best I can do from elevated CMD is "powercfg -h -size 40". This trims the default Hiberfil.sys file to about 13+ GB.

Where can one find information about how the OS manages the file? My caching program option unloads the cache at hibernation, else hibernation fails and the system remains running. So use of RAM for the caching shouldn't be counted as a parameter for defining Hiberfil.sys size, but it is.

And suppose you have 3 or 4 GB used by the OS and programs, with the remainder (excluding cache) either free or "standby?" Does hibernation for my 32GB RAM result in 13 GB added to TBW, or does it just modify portions of the existing file? If the latter is the case, then my concerns about the file size are imaginary and trivial.

It's been eight months since I installed the 960 Pro, racking up 10.1 TBW according to Magician. Ten years at that rate would still leave me with another 700 TBW remaining before I dump the SSD to recycling. And a good portion of that 10 TBW arose from deleting and recreating partitions as I tweaked my dual-boot configuration and got through the process of doing it while installing my Creator's Build #1703.

The nice thing about Windows 10 -- it does better managing Virtual Memory and the pagefile size with an SSD. My pagefile is OS-managed, but Win sets it at 4GB.

I added the bold italics seeking answers from colleagues here. Maybe I'm lazy, or I just don't have the time to pour over the Windows Knowledgebase and Google search results . . .