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)
- GitHub (99% - 6.9 GB)
- AppData (44.2% - 6.2 GB)
- OneDrive (8.7% - 1.3 GB)
- Documents (46% - 7.0 GB)
- Other...
- BigFont (100%)
- 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
- Programs and Features, to uninstall programs