Windows C Drive quite full - help?

[ryanbatc 12,820]

Never thought I'd have this problem.  My 120GB SSD is nearly full - it's my Win7 drive but it obviously isn't just Win7 data.  Can anyone suggest options to declutter it/dejunk it?

 

For staters I found this neat program...WinDirStat...  shows you a lot of info with a neat graphical display of file size in percent of the drive

 

Would it be a poor idea to decrease my pagefile.sys?  After upgrading to 16GB ram Windows increased my PF to 16GB.

 

[Greggy_D 935]

Ryan a few things to try:

 

1.  Set your Swap File (pagefile.sys) manually to 2GB (2048) on your C: Drive.  This should be set as min and max.  16GB is crazy big and a waste.

 

2.  Are you still running with Hibernation active?  If so, disable it.  From a command prompt (run as admin) type    powercfg -h off        (Don't worry....sleep still functions just fine.)

 

3.  Run Disk Cleanup, but again right click on it and run as admin.  You should see an option to select Windows Update Cleanup (might also say Service Pack Backup Files).  Make sure that is selected with all of your other choices.

 

Between these 3, you'll free up a decent amount of space.

 

WinDirStat is a phenomenal program.  If you click on each of those big blobs, it will zero in on the exact file that is eating up the space.

[ryanbatc 12,820]

 

 

WinDirStat is a phenomenal program.  If you click on each of those big blobs, it will zero in on the exact file that is eating up the space.

Woah!  How neat!  Thanks for the tips.  So there's no issue today in age with dropping the PF?  Also I do have a hibernation.sys file - what does it do exactly?

[spesimen 135]

you just need enough pagefile to cover the case when you start to go over. ideally all your apps and OS will fit in 16Gb so going over is rare and at that point you just want a buffer to gracefully deal with nearing the limit instead of starting to throw out of memory errors. i would agree something like 2Gb is probably enough.

 

the hibernation.sys file is a complete copy of ram that is written to disk when you enter hibernate mode, which shuts down the computer, and then reloads the RAM image on startup instead of going through the whole windows boot process. i never really used it since booting is only 30 seconds on my machine anyway and i rarely do it more than once a day. i think it might be more handy for laptops or such..  by disabling hibernation that file's reserved space can go away .

 

cheers

-andy crosby

[Poppet 703]

What have you got in Programdata \ Package Cache ?  Delete any old Installers you don't need any more 

[greggerm 312]

Looks as though you have almost 2 GB sitting in the "NVIDIA" folder, which is often the temporary location for nVidia driver installations. If you have the original downloaded installers archived on a different drive, I believe you are clear to delete the C:\NVIDIA directory. (*well, back it up somewhere safe temporarily just in case)

[Beeline90 12]

You can always create a symbolic link using the junction command. This moves "a folder" from your SSD to a hard drive if

you have one, that windows can still access. I freed up 30gb using this method.

[twharrell 38]

Great thread, Ryan. I was just thinking about asking the same thing.

[ryanbatc 12,820]

Well I did most of the suggestions here and freed up about 15 GB.  Thanks

[twharrell 38]

Ryan a few things to try:

 

1.  Set your Swap File (pagefile.sys) manually to 2GB (2048) on your C: Drive.  This should be set as min and max.  16GB is crazy big and a waste.

 

2.  Are you still running with Hibernation active?  If so, disable it.  From a command prompt (run as admin) type    powercfg -h off        (Don't worry....sleep still functions just fine.)

 

3.  Run Disk Cleanup, but again right click on it and run as admin.  You should see an option to select Windows Update Cleanup (might also say Service Pack Backup Files).  Make sure that is selected with all of your other choices.

 

Between these 3, you'll free up a decent amount of space.

 

WinDirStat is a phenomenal program.  If you click on each of those big blobs, it will zero in on the exact file that is eating up the space.

 How do you do #1?

[twharrell 38]

I found this great tool which allows you to create a symbolic link with just a couple of clicks.

 

http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html#referencecount

 

I moved my C:\Program Data\Program Cache to one of my 1 TB HDD storage drives and then used Link Shell Extension to create a symbolic link back to the original file location. That freed up a ton of space on my OS drive - about 60 GB.

[twharrell 38]

How do you do #1?

Never mind - found it after doing some searching. If anyone else interested, go here:

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/15055/windows-7-optimize-windows-better-performance

 

Go to the bottom of the page.