The easiest way to do this is via a command prompt.
Press the WINDOWS key and R at the same time to bring up a RUN box, then type CMD.
At the command prompt type powercfg -h off and then press ENTER.
This will disable hibernation and also delete any hiberfil.sys files on the hard disk.
Windows 2008 and Vista have a new disk defragmentation utility that leaves a lot to be desired in the way of user functionality. Windows 2003 and XP both had a graphical app that would show you roughly how much of the disk was fragmented on a bar and you could also view which files had the most fragments with a precise number of fragments listed per file. This helped because you could move certain heavily fragmented files away form the disk, run a defrag and then copy them back.
I think that disk defragmentation in servers is one of the most overlooked performance hits that can be so easily fixed overnight. We have such large files now for databases and the like that if we are not careful and allow our disk space to get low, fragmentation can affect file, Exchange, SQl and backup performance dramatically. I had a client who’s backup started taking an extra 30 minutes per week with a real increase in disk space usage of 1% per week. Over 2 months this was having a massive affect on the backup window, causing the backup to run during business hours and making the file server very slow while it was still getting backed up. Many things were tried by others, such as swapping out the LTO4 tape drive, the SCSI card and installing various patches and changes to the backup software. I suggested that the disk was heavily fragmented and ran a report which showed some popular Excel files of around 30MB in size had up to 10,000 fragments. This was brushed aside by others, but 2 weeks after all of the hardware swap outs and calls to Symantec, the problem was still occurring.
I was finally allowed to test my fragmentation theory, and so I set about moving the 30 most fragmented files off the server (which took a long time due to the fact that they were spread all over the disks). I then ran a defrag over night on a Saturday when the back was not running, then copied the files back.
The backup took 3 hours less than it had the previous time, proving my theory to the other techs and all just because of a simple disk defrag.
I use and recommend the Diskeeper range of products that work on Windows XP, 2003, Vista and 2008 which can be found at there website here. A 30 day trial is available and I think that you will notice a vast improvement in your older servers performance and a fairly good improvement in your newer ones.