Hibernation is a state of inactivity and metabolic depression in animals, characterized by lower body temperature, slower breathing, and lower metabolic rate. Hibernating animals conserve energy, especially during winter when food is short, tapping energy reserves, body fat, at a slow rate.
What the beelzebub am I talking about? Let’s not get too lost in metaphor.
Suffice to say, Hibernate is a feature seen in almost all operating systems where the contents of the RAM are stored as it is onto Hard disk (non-volatile) so that all your opened programs and others running can be revoked from the same position again when you Start your PC.
More over Hibernating and restoring from Hibernate are much faster when compared to Hard Reboot.
With the Hibernate option active, whenever your are running your PC by default Windows fetches all your opened data from the RAM and stores in a specific file called hiberfil.sys which resides in your root directory. And when you Hibernate, your PC contents of this system file are stored as it is on to the non-volatile storage, such as the hard disk (as either a file or on a separate partition) before powering off the system.
Later the system can be restored to the state it was in when hibernation was invoked, so that programs can continue executing as if nothing happened.
To invoke this feature you require free space on your Hard disk equal to that of your RAM.
Even though it is a built-in feature of almost all Versions of Windows OS, only few make use of it because by default it’s in the Disabled state.
So, now we shall Know How-To enable Hibernate option on your PC.
- Go to Control Panel (type control in Run.. dialog box )
- Open Power Options which is used to configure power-saving setting on you PC.
- There you get the see Hibernate tab on top.
Click it and then check the box saying Enable hibernation (as shown in image)
The disk space required to hibernate is almost equal to the size of your RAM.
- Now can see Hibernate option in the Turn off Computer screen (Windows shutdown screen) when you Hold the SHIFT key which toggles Stand By to Hibernate option.