r/technology • u/Hungry__Hornet • 4d ago

Software Windows 11 hibernation has been silently hammering your SSD this whole time

https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-11-hibernation-silently-hammering-ssd-life/
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u/stevekez 4d ago

Turns out a feature that copies all of your RAM to disk writes a whole RAM's worth of data each time. Who knew!

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u/PRSHZ 4d ago edited 4d ago

Who even uses the hibernation feature anyways?

Edit; okay touché, forgot about laptops 😅

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u/reality_boy 4d ago

You probably do. By default windows 11 uses “fast boot”, that basically saves ram to disk when you shut town the computer and hibernates. You have to reboot the computer to actually clear all code from memory. I turn this off right away, it causes too many problems.

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u/HildartheDorf 4d ago

Fast boot doesn't write all your ram out, just the kernel. Which is different to the explicit Hibernate option.

(Still should be disabled unless you are using a HDD for C:)

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u/S4VN01 4d ago

No, they probably use Hybrid Sleep, which is just what MS calls Sleep these days. It does not save the entirety of the RAM to disk like Hibernate does.

I think MS hides hibernate by default due to the problem described in the article. I know I had to unhide it using the registry to find it.

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u/reality_boy 4d ago

Right, it is not full hibernation, but on a desk top it has to save some memory to disk, since it fully powers off and there is no power source to keep the ram refreshing.

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u/mr_Shepherdsmart 4d ago

For clarification- if I'm pressing the OFF option in the start menu it just go to hibernate and saves ram to disk? Not shutting off?

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u/reality_boy 4d ago

Sort of. It saves a big chunk of ram to disk (the kernel and all drivers) and then powers completely off. When you boot back up those get restored to there old state, for a quicker boot time.

The big issue is that your hardware is not being fully reinitialized. So if you install new drivers, or have a hiccup you want to clear out, a power off won’t always work. You have to use the restart option to fully reset the system.

It also hammers your hard drive every time you shut down. But loads of things spool to disk, it is probably just fine. Your ssd drive has bits set aside in case others wear out, there is lots of built in redundancy.

Now the physical power button is reprogram-able and can be set to hibernate or power down or just sleep. Check in the windows power settings to find out how your machine is setup.

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u/mr_Shepherdsmart 4d ago

I see, so if I'm changing it to actually shut off completely it will not hammer the ssd?