Windows Hibernation mode is a feature in Windows that allows your computer to essentially turn off to save power with the advantage that you will be exactly where you left off when you come out of hibernation. When a computer is put into hibernation mode, the computer takes a snapshot of all the memory and the Windows settings and saves all this information on the hard disk of the computer. After the information is saved, the computer turns off. As stated above, a great benefit of this is that there is no need for power to maintain itself in the hibernation state. This is not the case in the standby mode which requires some power.

For whatever reason, you may want to disable Windows Hibernation. One reason is that turning off hibernation mode can save a lot of disk space. The amount of space it will save depends on your PC, but it could save gigabytes worth of space.

Disable Hibernation in Windows 7

In Windows 7, the option of hibernation is enabled and is turned on by default. If you would like to disable this feature, you can follow the simple steps below.

• First, click the start icon and type cmd into the Windows search box. In the search results list, right-click cmd, and then click Run as Administrator.
• Type the command powercfg -h off and press enter. You will need administrator permissions to use this command. So, if you don’t have them or if you don’t “run as administrator”, this won’t work.

By typing the above command the hibernation option will be disabled on the computer. If you want to re-enable hibernation, you can simply open up the command prompt window again and use the command powercfg -h on.

Disable Hibernation in Windows 8

Luckily, disabling hibernation in Windows 8 is pretty easy as well. You can simply follow the directions above for the Windows 7 guide. So, you need to open a command prompt as an administrator, then you can run the command powercfg -h off. Yet again, to turn hibernation back on in Windows 8, you can use powercfg -h on. That is it!