Save hard disk space in Windows.

TLDR;

• Use CCleaner . It reduced my AppData folder significantly.
• Remove build results by cleaning solutions in Visual Studio . This reduced my GitHub folder significantly.
• The above two reduced my Users folder from 34% to 26% which is a savings of 4.7 GB.
• Disable hibernation.
• Uninstall unused programs .

I have a Surface Pro 3 with a 120 GB hard disk drive. I often run into storage limitations. Previously, I wrote about saving space by disabling hibernation . Here is a list of other things to do or not to do.

Examine the Usual Suspects with WinDirStat . Here are my stats on the computer named BigFont.

• Windows (34% - 15.9 GB)
  • WinSxS (38% - 6.1 GB)
  • Installer (15% - 2.5 GB)
  • System32 (13% - 2.1 GB)
  • Other...
• Users (34% - 14.7 GB)
  • BigFont (100%)
    • Documents (46% - 7.0 GB)
      • GitHub (99% - 6.9 GB)
        • 2014-121PZ (39% - 2.7 GB)
        • orchard-cms-modules-and-themes (31% - 2.2 GB)
        • 2014-123ST (10% - 701.4 MB)
    • AppData (44.2% - 6.2 GB)
    • OneDrive (8.7% - 1.3 GB)
  • Other...
• Program Files (x86) (15.8%)
• Program Files (9%)
• ProgramData (6.2%)
• Other...

GitHub

• This is taking up 6.9 GB of space.
• Most of the space is within is Orchard.Web\Modules
  • these come in between 15 MB and 1.9 GB.
  • The difference is because of build results in each modules \bin!
  • So, open Visual Studio and Clean the Solution! This will reduce it to about 15 MB from 1.9 GB.
• Lots of the space is .jpegs
  • Get these out of the code.
  • They don't belong in version control.
  • Store them, for instance, in OneDrive offline only storage.

AppData

• Install CCLeaner to save space in here.
  • You must close WinDirStat before installing,
  • lest you receive "error writing to file lang-1092.dll"
• Once installed, just open it and click Run Cleaner (in the lower right corner.)

System32

• Can I delete files from the System32 folder?
• "The Windows System32 folder contains your Windows operating system's core system files.
• "Most of these files are vital to the functioning of your computer.
• "Microsoft strongly advices against modifying or deleting any of the contents within your System32 folder."

Installer

• Can you safely delete files in the %windir%\Installer directory?
• "The answer if flatly: NO."
• The way to reduce the size of this directory is to uninstall programs via Programs & Features.

WinSxS

• Clean up the WinSxS Folder
• "One commonly asked question is can I delete the WinSxS folder to regain some disk space? The short answer is no."
• Use Task Manager to manually run the StartComponentCleanup task
  • Windows already does this automatically,
  • so my theory is that running manually is a quick fix.
• Use Deployment Imaging Service and Management (DSIM.exe)
  • /StartComponentCleanup is similar to the above Task Manager method
  • /ResetBase with /StartComponentCleanup does the same AND removes components that updates have replaced
  • /SPSuperseded removes any components necessary to uninstall a service pack
• Disk Cleanup with System Files (no change)
  • Start Screen > "Disk Cleanup" > Free up disk space by deleting unnecessary files
  • Clean up system files
  • Choose Drives
  • Choose Files
  • Click Delete Files
  • More Options
    • Programs and Features, to uninstall programs
      • Remove programs freely.
      • Windows will warn you if you're going to break dependencies.
    • System Restore and Shadow Copies, delete all but the most recent restore point