Off load some files, such as photos, to a USB thumb drive or external hard drive. Then install CCleaner, PC De-crapifier, or so such other program.
I had a couple of “important” updates that wouldn’t install because my C: disk space was so low. I actually had to turn off the virtual memory on C: to make room for the updates. (I use a moderately insane partitioning scheme that concentrates the main virtual memory on a virtual D:, so I didn’t really lose much performance).
After my next full backup (soon), I plan to repartition that hard drive to increase the C: space by 25% or so, so I have a little more breathing room.
Unless you are streaming it, watching a video often causes it to be downloaded to temp where it stays forever.
External USB disks are very cheap, and good for backup in any case. What are the files Windirstat say are the largest? A computer bought two years ago should have more room than you’ll ever need unless you store tons of video and music, and really tons. Figuring out what is using the space is much better than just buying a bigger disk.
Hello all, sorry for the long wait.
I ran WinDirStat and this is what it chowed, and I am list the main files that show a colored line which means space is taken up, and the sub files within a file.
Bear with me.
Windows 51% 23 GB, WITHING WINDOWNS, there is WINSXS 53* 12 GB
Users 14% 6.4 GB within it is My user folder 93%, then pics 56%, APP Data 23%, Music 13%
Programs Data 11&, 5.2 GB
Program Files 10% 4.7 GB
Files 8.1 % 3.7 GB
Spalsh.SYS 349 MB 0.8%
Lexmark 163 MB
SPLASH 66 MB
Recycle Bin 673 MB
Now some more sub files:
Norton
VAIO MOVIE STORY
VAIOCARE
VAIO DVD MENU DATA
NORTON DATA
WINDOWS LIVE 44% 287 MB
ADOBE(Which I uninstalled a long time ago)
Files in Open Office(however when I go there it says the folder is EMPTY, and there is nothing there).
To answer some questions asked earlier, my total disk size 453 MB, and I have NO free space it seems as it tells me.
I have NO movies that are taking up space, no porn, music videos, home videos, nothing downloaded.
When I want to delete something to the recycle bin, it says something like this:
“Are You Sure What You are Doing?” X (INSERT ANY ITEM) IF REMOVED COULD DAMAGE OR CHANGE OR SYSTEM".
then it says below like “Never show me this notiftication again”.
Anything I want to delete it gives me the warning, and I don’t want to take a risk.
WinDirStat sucks because it shows random colors, it must show ONE particular color that symbolizes afile that is taking too much disk space. And I know space and memory are two different things.
So what do I do?
If I don’t get a sound advice here, I want a consensus, then I will use CCleaner.
And another thing you should know is that, when I am on the internet I get notifications from Norton that tells me that "High Disk Usage by Malware bytes, .exe, Windows, etc etc:. So basically things that are taking “high disk space”.
Hope you all can give advice based on the information I provided.
Thanks!
You have not specified the O/S version but I assume you are running windows, correct?
Go to file explorer and search on size. Windows 8, you can search on “gigantic” (128MB) and “huge”, etc. Every time I run “gigantic” I always find a couple of files I recog>nize and can delete a couple of those and free up a whole lot of space pretty easily. Of course, remember to empty the recycle bin or run “disc cleanup” afterwards.
It is windows 7. I will follow your lead, but have done regular disk cleaning on the computer to no avail, including there cycle bin. I knew this would happen, I need opinions on the files shown as taking up space via windirstat.
I don’t know windirstat. But try the search on large files in windows file explorer. I can’t rememberwhat it was in Win7 but I know you could search on some kind of large files. File explorer will warm if it’s a program file.
One thing that can take up a lot of space are backups. Is Norton automatically making a backup of your HD every month or so? How about Win 7? If so, you only need the most recent one.
Based on some of the other information you’ve given, I assume you mean 453 GB. And further, for c:\Windows disk use, you mean 230 GB (for it to be using 51% of the disk)?
That’s really pretty greedy, so I would dig further into that.
The most likely explanation is huge cached and temp files.
If you find which folders are the main offenders, and post the paths here, I’m sure Dopers can tell you if they’re safe to delete or not.
I think Internet Explorer caches files under here, so clearing the IE cache as others have suggested may well free up an unholy amount of space (you can do it from IE: from the menu pick Tools, Internet Options, General tab, Browsing history).
Best Solution for Low Computer Disk?
I’d go with a phone book, or possibly a milk crate, depends how much you want to raise it…
But seriously, I’d also look into system restore points and settings around them, can be quite the space hog if you let them…
also, what do you use\do in terms of malware, virus protection etc? always a chance something has jumped in there, and things aren’t quite being presented as they should be, or are getting unnecessarily bloated…
I would run Directory Report
http://www.file-utilities.com
It found preloaded software on my computer
They hope you will buy it and to speed up the purchasing, the files are already there
I have no plans on purchasing so I deleted it
and
I would clean up the browser history of Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, …
[QUOTE=Nema98]
“Are You Sure What You are Doing?” X (INSERT ANY ITEM) IF REMOVED COULD DAMAGE OR CHANGE OR SYSTEM".
[/QUOTE]
Have you done a thorough scan for viruses, malware, etc.?
WinDirStat has been around long enough that I’d like to think its messages would be grammatically decent.
I just installed WinDirStat on this PC, and when I ask it to delete something, it does ask
Do you know what you are doing?
You are going to remove C:\Worthless\Junk Files
from your computer.
Deletion of system files or directories can seriously damage your system.
Continue?As for the size of the Windows directory, 23 GB isn’t bad. Mine’s 27. Mess with anything here at your peril. WinSxS contains files needed for Windows Update, and should be left alone.
Anything in a temp or TMP directory is probably safe to remove.
If you don’t use the hibernation function, you can disable thatand recover a couple GB of disk.
This is a super power user move but it can gain you tons of space.
Search in Control Panel for Disk Management. It will give you a result of Administrative Tools.
In here, select Computer Management. A new window will open and there will be a list. Near the bottom under Storage you will find Disk Management. This window will show you physical drives and their partitions. One will be listed probably as C: and will have things listed like system, boot, page file, active, crash dump, primary partition. Leave this one alone.
Are there any others? Your PC maker probably put a backup on there that is taking up several gigabytes of space. However, at this point you must make sure you have a friend who can fix your computer for you should anything go wrong. Deleting your backup partition will void your warranty for sure and if you take it back to the shop they will charge you full price to reinstall a new copy of Windows (unless they have their own set of OEM disks and you have your Windows key).
I don’t actually recommend deleting anything in here but I am curious as to how much space your computer has devoted to something you are probably never going to use.
Assuming the report results are complete, it looks like she only has about 60GB of data total. Do Vaios come with unusually small HDs?
Your browser history requires a negligible amount of hard drive space. You mean the browser cache, which still won’t be that much.
I think one key thing to focus on is the OP’s comment:
WINSXS 53* 12 GB
Do a Google search for WINSYS and read; for example:
Take it to a Geek Squad or something better locally and just buy a new hard drive and have them clone your old one onto it. It’s not worth your time to comb through all the myriad temp files. Whatever you clear will be back in a month or two.
Are you SURE you’re low on space? According to WinDirStat, you only have 47GB of disk taken up with data. Even you have a 64GB SSD (59.5GB of effective space) this shouldn’t be a problem.
Bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes are NOT interchangeable, each one is 1024 times larger than the last.
If you have more than 10GB (gigabytes) of free space I wouldn’t worry about it. Check the properties of your C: partition. Sounds to me like you have a virus, which is why you’re getting those abnormal notifications. Possibly something you’ve installed or installed itself.
You can also turn off System Restore and delete all the restore points. This will gain back many gigabytes.
I’m curious what the results were from checking the partitions, to see if indeed there is a huge backup partition doing nothing.
Just keep in mind that all programs, like Java, Adobe programs, video players, and such must be on the same drive as the OS.
As has been said upthread, that must be wrong. Computers from the 1980s had disks that big.
This sounds like the kind of warning you get when a virus has attached itself to ordinary files as a way of not getting deleted, or getting to pop back up if it does.
Set a restore point, delete all the photos and word documents you want to get rid of, and then see if the computer seems to be working OK. If it’s fine, try to find the virus of malware that was popping up the message. If something really did go wrong, you can restore.
FWIW, if you do try to delete a crucial OS files, you will be denied access, most likely. The only way to get rid of OS files is generally by reformatting. If you get denied access to a word document you created when you try to get rid of it, run several malware programs at once-- that’s the best way to get rid of self-replicating malware that has settled into several different places in your computer.
Oh, also make a boot disk for your OS if you don’t have an installation disk because the software came loaded.
No they don’t.