Is it worth keeping the hiberfil.sys and are there any security risks?

Question

So I just ran a scan on my computer with WinDirStats and I realized I have this file called hiberfil.sys and that it was quite big. 13GB(12.7) so I started googleing about the specific file and I found things like

Hibernation copies everything stored in the computer’s memory and writes it to your hard drive

This thought might be kinda far fetched but what if I have pictures of me and my family and w/e stores in the memory and then someone hijacks my computer and get's ahold of it? Wouldnt it be safer to just delete the file?

Solution

Yes, hiberfil.sys is the memory image used for 'Hibernate' and 'Hybrid Sleep' features.

This thought might be kinda far fetched but what if I have pictures of me and my family and w/e stores in the memory and then someone hijacks my computer and get's ahold of it?

But you'd usually save those pictures to disk anyway, wouldn't you? So if someone steals the computer and is able to read the hibernation image... then they could just as easily read all other files you have there. It is much simpler to browse C:\Users\Jonny\Photos than rummage around bits in the RAM. (Not that it'll have much anyway.)

And if you want to avoid that, the only reliable solution is disk encryption – e.g. BitLocker.

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You cannot delete hiberfil.sys manually – to do that, you'd need to disable hibernation in Windows' "Power saving" settings. (This of course also disables hybrid sleep. You'll still be able to use the regular RAM-only suspend mode.)

Comments

[Tetsujin]

If someone had your computer it would be simpler for them to look in the regular file system. If you hibernate your computer, the hiberfil is how it does it. If you throw it away the system will make a new one.

[user1686]

Aren't you confusing hiberfil.sys with pagefile.sys? The former is only used as a hibernation image, while the latter is for swap/paging ("virtual memory").

[Tonny]

@grawity My though exactly. This whole answers talks about pagefile.sys and the dangers of removing it.

[Tonny]

You can't disable it through the GUI: Open a Command prompt window "as administrator" and run the command "powercfg -H off". This will also remove the file itself.

[DGoiko]

oh my god yes i did xD

[DGoiko]

okey, corrected it xD