I would like some advice about freeing up some space on my C drive. My C Drive has 120GB capacity, but it is used up almost to the max, slowing down my PC. My D Drive has 900GB capacity and has plenty of space available.
Can I move files such as my Program Files from my C to D drive? These seem to be the largest files that are taking up all the room. (e.g. my kids' Fortnite is 30GB!) What else can I move to my D Drive?
I have already done a disc clean up, emptied by Recycle bin etc.
Yep, unfortunately quite a few applications do install onto the C drive without you even asking. Given the standard drive sizes these days, 120GB is starting to fall on the small side and a lot of apps/games will use a lot more storage than they used to.
Prior to large capacities, apps and games compressed textures/audio and offloaded work to the CPU to decompress. These days it's not required so much, so they leave uncompressed content in the final product.
A 256GB SSD would be quite cheap and you could clone the existing C drive to one and swap them out, giving you double the storage space.
As the above poster said; try and upgrade the storage size. I notice that the C:\ drive just builds up with heaps of crap over the months/years.
See what programs you don't use and uninstall them.
Move semi-important programs to your D:\ drive. Generally you can copy and paste the files. Some require registry edits, in which case do an uninstall and reinstall.
Grab something like CCleaner. This will help remove some things taking up space that you didn't know took some. Google Chrome cache for example. Basically everything in C:\Temp.
Only keep important things on the C:\ drive. Things like installations of programs. Chrome, Steam, Discord. Anything larger than 100MB can go on the D:\ drive.
Perhaps purchase a portable hard drive for backups of things. Family photos. Videos. Music.
I do try to keep my C Drive as minimal as possible. This only includes:
Downloaded fonts (26MB)
Downloaded programmes (174MB)
Perflogs (0 BYTES)
Program Files (35GB)
Program Files (x86) (5.5GB) - I have no idea what this is!!
Users (30 GB)
Windows (7.1GB)
Windows.old (0 BYTES)
And I keep all my saved documents, photos etc on my D Drive. So I'm really puzzled as to why my C Drive is so full!
I can't click into see what the USERS folder is and cant understand why it takes up so much space!
Usually something hiding in hidden folders.
C:\Users\Default\AppData For example
Program Files (x86) (5.5GB) - I have no idea what this is!!
Here's a quick explanation. Basically some apps are built for 32 bit systems, others 64.
I'm sure in 20 years we'll have ditched the 32.
Do you have use itunes and iphone? Backup can take up a lot of space.
Users (30 GB)
do you have an iphone? this could be your backups/update files/app files.
could also be the default downloads folder too.
I don't use iphone - but have a Galaxy
Delete system 32 and your computer will run faster.
Jk, don't, in all honesty I would move my documents to a different drive and format the OS drive and reinstall. When apps update they sometimes don't clean up after themselves, I know this from the many years of using Adobe products and having found folders of old left overs.
You could uninstall forntnite and reinstall it but make sure it installs on the D: drive fornite should be attached to your account so you shouldn't lose anything as long as you have signed in.
Also USERS folder is huge, look for large video files etc which may be on desktop or in pictures or videos documents
Beyond uninstalling programs that you don't require anymore/moving them to the D drive (be wary of performance hits going from SSD -> HDD), your best option would be looking into the Users (30 GB).
I have already done a disc clean up, emptied by Recycle bin etc.
Is this done through the system's Disk Clean-up? If not, then do it through: File Explorer > Right click on C: drive > Properties > "Disk Clean-up" button. After you've done the clean up there, go though it again and now click the "Clean up system files" button. This allows you to remove left over system files from Windows Updates, so could potentially free up large chunks of space.
Also WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics) is a helpful program to see where the drive space is used.
Also WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics) is a helpful program to see where the drive space is used
Beyond helpful. If you ever want to know where your bytes are at, WinDirStat all the way.
I personally recommend WizTree, not that there's anything specifically wrong with WinDirStat, but WizTree reads from the file table instead of scanning the whole file system so works faster.
Yes, I did a Disk Clean up through the system's Disk Clean up. Thanks!
Another good option: SpaceSniffer. It's portable and personally I find the visual representation of space the best.
You'll have to run it with admin rights to be able to see every nook and cranny in your C drive.
Also run a CCleaner analysis to see if anything obvious could be cleaned.
Reinstall fortnite onto the D drive. Use Spacesniffer to find the biggest folders/files in User. That's all you can do, I don't consider 120GB manageable on a modern system, it's too small. Also try looking at the pagefile settings and change that to D drive if you haven't already. Don't move any other programs to D drive unless you want them to run like shit, C drive is literally for windows/programs which is why it's faster (I'm assuming SSD, given the 120GB size).
You can also use Treesize Free to see where the space is being used (eg. by drilling down into the subfolders in Program Files and Users):
Make sure you Run As Administrator so you can see all folders.
This will tell you exactly where all your space is being used.
When you disc cleaned - did you do system files also? They can be HUGE (old windows updates)
But YES, uninstall Fortnite and reinstall it on D
As someone else said, get WinDirStat as a first step and see which files are the largest on the disc and delete/move what you don't need on there. Just be careful not to remove system files! You may have forgotten about some old files which are taking up space. It will look through everything.
Delete your porn bro.
Download and install ccleaner program (free download). I just use the free version and run it in the default mode every 3 or 4 days.
This program will clear out a lot of rubbish and free up some space. also run the registry cleaner. This will clear out unwanted/unnecessary stuff in there
Don't bother cleaning your registry. Windows is designed to deal with growing registry data and removing entries can cause problems.
I use an old freeware program Scanner to see where all my space has gone (may need to run as administrator on current Win versions for full picture).
Which version of Windows are you on? I'm going to assume 10.
If you have a Windows.OLD folder, there is a good chance it's not empty but reporting 0 bytes due to restricted access of current user. I'd say there is at least another 10GB worth in pagefile and hibernation file too though disabling this isn't a good idea.
As others mentioned, Disk Clean-up utility is the way to go as first step. On Win10 you can also access this via Settings/System/Storage - Free Up Space Now.
Ultimately 120GB doesn't go far these days. If upgrading is an option a new SSD can be had fairly cheap 240GB - ~$40 500GB ~$90 960GB ~ $130 though I'd start at 500GB, 240GB won't be long before you're in the same situation.
Very useful posts. Btw where to download Fortnite (Forntnite), Spacesniffer reliably? I am afraid of spam sites.
Ta
Almost on cue, Lifehacker posts an article on how to free up drive space
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2019/05/how-to-quickly-free-up…
I've got a 120GB SSD with about 40% free space, I don't think upgrading is necessary.
WizTree or WinDirStat to find excessive file sizes
Run the disk cleanup utility (right lick C:\ > properties > disk cleanup) and make sure you click 'cleanup system files' after its done it's first scan https://i.imgur.com/W2Y7iYM.jpg. Sometimes Windows updates leaves gigs of shit behind.
Clean out C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Temp
You said above you don't know what's in C:\Users - Everything here is under defaults to C:\Users https://i.imgur.com/o5z3dVw.png, so anything you're saving onto your desktop or into your documents folders adds to your C:\ size.
If you never hibernate your PC, run CMD as admin and enter "powercfg.exe /h off" - turns off the hibernation file that's stored in root C:\ (hidden system file)
If you've got a lot of RAM or don't do anything resource heavy, reduce or disable or page file that's also on root C:\ https://itstillworks.com/reduce-pagefilesys-size-6132970.htm…
https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/18239-how-change-p…
Do a full system backup and test for bare metal restore before you attempt these procedures. If things go wrong your Windows system may not boot at all.
Buy a 500gb ssd, clone your C: drive and you won't have to worry or muck about for a long time. They are very cheap lately.
Had the same issue with my laptop which is almost six years old. Just installed and ran a trial version of the AVG utilities which did the trick
To be honest, you'll probably do better with a 256GB SSD, 120GB sounds fine but once you start seeing how much windows updates takes up for temporary files, plus other windows files and your normal things it quickly shrinks, last I checked at least 35GB was being used up by Windows alone after just a reformat.
Most programs you can install to D drive without issue though, I do this with all my Steam games and other programs. Thing is though you kind of need to install them there, sometimes they have reference files created which if you moved manually breaks. Even your shortcuts may not work on your desktop.