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I have a UPS feeding a Windows 10 machine, and therefore I installed an application called PowerChute, which allows to configure UPS-related stuff.

Today I wanted to disable hibernation on that machine, because it was taking up around 28GB of space on an SSD which is somewhat tight on space. It's a system which runs 24/7 and I never put it into hibernation. Either I reboot it or I shut it down completely, but never hibernate it.

After disabling and rebooting, PowerChute popped up a dialog which was telling me that I should enable hibernation on this system, because it will allow the system to recover after a shutdown caused by a loss power.

What does this mean? Does this only relate to the fact that PowerChute will be able to better shut the system down if it detects that it is running on battery and it is running low, that the current state will be recovered after the system powers on again? For example, that virtual machines (VirtualBox) will retain their running state after the system powers on?

Or does this mean that Windows somehow is more capable of recovering itself after a power loss, regardless of PowerChute and the UPS? For example that open files won't get corrupted?

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PowerChute will be able to better shut the system down if it detects that it is running on battery and it is running low, that the current state will be recovered after the system powers on again?

If you don't have hibernation allowed, then most UPS can do is to shut down your computer after trying to save everything. Best case you won't loose data, but no chance to restore status.

With hibernation the exact state could be recovered.

Or does this mean that Windows somehow is more capable of recovering itself after a power loss, regardless of PowerChute and the UPS?

Without an UPS this setting isn't relevant in case of a power loss as Windows anyway wouldn't have time to hibernate.

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  • Of course if you have the ability to remotely shutdown your computer and/or are always home to shutdown your computer, feel free to skip enabling hibernation
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 11, 2020 at 18:37
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It helps to understand what hibernation is. Hibernation writes the contents of memory to disk and then shuts down the computer fully. On restart the appropriate memory stored in disk us copied into memory and you can continue exactly where you left off - thus you can hybernate a system without power indefinitely.(open files won't be lost because their contents are in RAM, which is dumped to disk)

Sleep, on the other hand puts the system into a minimal state, but keeps things in RAM. When all the power is lost, the state of the machine is lost. This can save power and is good on a laptop where you need to resume quickly.

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