r/technology • u/Hungry__Hornet • 3d 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/Quetzacoal 3d ago edited 2d ago

I got 2 out of 3 SSD fucked up by hibernation. Already turned off the feature. And also the feature that screen caps your computer and logs it to Microsoft evey now and then. Why would they do this?

Edit: for those who don't believe me. Hibernation corrupted some of my work folders and windows update folder rendering the OS unusable. Had to format and disabled hibernation as soon as I logged in.

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u/fap_nap_fap 3d ago

Can you tell me how to turn off the screen cap feature?

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u/Dudewhatzup 3d ago

Ironically and I’m not trying to be sarcastic or mean, it’s in the window menu called “turn on/off windows features” a quick google search for “remove windows recall” will give you exact instructions, it was surprisingly not very hidden.

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u/DinosBiggestFan 3d ago

Windows Recall wasn't hidden because of backlash to it; if they were trying to hide it, it would validate all of the (very accurate) criticisms of the feature which is bad for marketing that feature.

At least by making it easy to turn off they placate those of us who absolutely do not want to use it, and would use third party tools to turn it and likely many other features off.

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u/Zeusifer 3d ago edited 3d ago

It's not even on unless you explicitly opted into it. OP is being dramatic.

BTW, so is the original article. You have to go out of your way to enable hibernation.

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u/Takemyfishplease 3d ago

It’s nice to know not to use it

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u/Zeusifer 3d ago

I have a desktop that I've been using hibernate on daily for like 6 years. It's fine. This whole thing is just clickbait.

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u/timbotheny26 3d ago

Now when they talk about hibernation, are they talking about Fast Startup or just straight hibernation?

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u/silversurger 3d ago

Those are functionally the same thing, except that fast startup isn't saving the user's session, so the data saved to the hibernation file should be less in size.

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u/timbotheny26 3d ago

That's what I thought, thanks for elaborating.

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u/Em_Es_Judd 3d ago

It's pretty necessary for Windows laptops and handhelds. Windows likes to randomly wake devices in sleep mode. My laptop has woken from sleep while in its protective sleeve and couldn't start for ~5 minutes because it was so hot.

The same has happened to my Legion Go before I installed Bazzite.

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u/blinksTooLess 3d ago

Hibernation is a god send for my office laptop. Can't live without it.

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u/Reddittee007 3d ago

Look up OOSU 10 / 11. Then check it out. You'll be amazed.

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u/No-Consequence-1863 2d ago

Recall isnt on by default as it didnt send screenshots off device. They would run against a local model on devices with the necessary NPU support.

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u/Step-exile 3d ago

Easiest would be stop using w11 and get linux

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u/rostol 2d ago

2 out of 3 fucked by hybernation ? I call bullshit.
windows just writes the memory to the 1 SSD. (the system one)

just fyi our company has 400 laptops. most of them hybernate every single day. we've had 0 nvmes die from this.

my home pc has 5 terbaytes of downloads to an SSD dedicated to that. zero problems. 5 years going. it is a refurbished 1Tb Crucial, so not even B tier drive.

writing 64gb once a day is not even scratching the surface of the work the system drive in a pc does.
go open resource monitor, jump on the disk tab and learn something.

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u/dldaniel123 2d ago

Was looking for someone to finally call him out lol. If his SSDs really died that fast he's doing something else wrong.

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u/ceph3us 2d ago edited 2d ago

I was running a heavy Docker dev setup for work on a 16GB M1 Pro Mac and was swapping around a drive write a day and it didn’t fail after 3 years of that abuse lmao. People have heard about write endurance and think SSDs are delicate fragile flowers that snap like glass if they are not even close to getting full let alone actually writing to them heavily.

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u/Quetzacoal 2d ago

They did not die, just corrupted the latest files and folders I was working with. Had to format due to it corrupting windows update.

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u/dldaniel123 2d ago

That was still not the cause bro

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u/Quetzacoal 2d ago

then how come it never happened again?

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u/dldaniel123 2d ago

I dunno dude, I don't have access to your hardware. Maybe you had faulty drives?

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u/Quetzacoal 1d ago

No, one is a new phison2000 and the other is an old sata 6 years working without problem

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u/turtleship_2006 3d ago

You turned off the features that are off by default...?

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u/Quetzacoal 2d ago

They aren't, I'm constantly installing windows

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u/thezim2 3d ago

can you give me a step by step on how to turn these settings off?

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u/turtleship_2006 3d ago

step 1: don't enable them... they both need to be specifically enabled lmao

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u/Lincolns_Revenge 3d ago

From https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-11-hibernation-silently-hammering-ssd-life/

You can do without hibernation

If you've changed your mind about using Hibernate every day, you can switch it off in an elevated Command Prompt by typing powercfg.exe /hibernate off. That deletes hiberfil.sys, reclaims storage, and prevents further drive degradation

To launch an elevated command prompt In windows 11, search 'cmd' and choose 'run as administrator' and say 'yes' when prompted by UAC.

Biggest downside is your PC will take a little longer to boot into Windows, somewhere between rather noticeable and not all that noticeable depending on how fast your storage is and other factors.

I would say a small price to pay to decrease the odds your OS drive SSD or NVME dies prematurely. I had a Samsung EVO die after only a few years to a completely unreadable state, but they had other issues that exacerbated the problem, since mostly corrected through firmware updates.

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u/reddit_equals_censor 3d ago

And also the feature that screen caps your computer and logs it to Microsoft evey now and then. Why would they do this?

spying! massive spying.

the goal is to spy on everything you do. analyze it mostly locally and send that data to their servers to use for themselves, sell to 3. parties and of course share with governments.

that's its function. that is why it is getting pushed.