Hibernation Partition - what is it? How to remove it?

[psmithm]

I noticed there is a 4G Partition on the C: drive called Hibernation Partition.  It is a small 128G SSD drive so space is at a premium. It doesn't even have a drive letter mapped to it so I can't imagine that its being used in any way.  Also there is no hiberfil.sys on the c: drive and hibernation isn't even enables (according to windows) so I can't imagine what possible use this partition is.

I tried to delete it in the usual way using Disk Management tool but when I right-click on the volume there is no option at all to remove it as there is with other volumes

[Huffer]

What model is this? It is likely the recovery partition or do you have one of those, too? Did this 128 gb ssd come standard on the computer or did you add it? Can you do a screen shot of disk manager?

[psmithm]

HP Folio 13.3 Ultrabook, model 13-1035nr. Stock configuration. The partitions include HP TOOLS, the recovery partition, and the Hibernation Partition.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Well the hibernation partition is usually a non-DOS file system like FAT12. You may have to use the command line diskpart command to remove it. Here is an article that will help:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

List the partitions, then select the hibernation partition and try to delete it. Examples are given in the link above. Note the discussion of the override command which you may have to use with the delete partition command.

I would make a backup image of the whole hard drive before doing that however, just in case. If you do not want to hibernate you do not need the hibernation partition. It is always the same size as the installed memory because to hibernate it writes the contents of memory to the disk partition. I had kind of thought hiberfil.sys had taken the place of suspend to disk but obviously not.

[psmithm]

Thanks, I appreciate the quick reply!

[sconnett]

Is there a way to resize it if additional RAM is added?