The biggest mistake anyone can do while configuring and installing a computer is to create the C drive with a small partition. By saying “small partition”, I mean anything less than 20GB. The price of hard disks (GB/price) has dropped a lot in recent years. Some computer packages come with a default 160GB hard disk. That is why I don’t understand why people end up leaving so little space for their C drive.
When your C drive is almost full, it is natural to think of ways on how to increase hard disk space for your C drive. If you do an online search, you’ll get a few tips like clearing up temp files, uninstalling unused programs, removing unused files, backup files into removable storage and delete them from the hard disk etc.
Those are useful tips but what if there isn’t much space you can recover by following the recommended methods? Here, I shall share with you some methods I have used to recover “lost” space on the C drive.
1. Disable Hibernation on your Windows
In my opinion, Windows XP was developed with a very useful feature called Hibernation. What it does is that it allows you to shutdown the computer without closing your applications, thus saving your work. The next time you boot up your computer, all your previous work will be loaded up automatically. On the downside though, Hibernation doesn’t come cheap — it requires at least 512MB depending on your system. It took up more than 1GB on my Acer notebook.
How to find out if Hibernation is enabled on your computer? Just click on the Start button and select Turn off computer. Hold down the Shift button and see if the Standby icon changes to Hibernate. If it does, Hibernation mode is enabled.
If Hibernation is on, you can disable it by going into the Control Panel and clicking on the Power Options icon. Click on the Hibernate tab. Uncheck the Enable hibernation checkbox and click OK.
2. Disable System Restore / Resize Disk Space Usage Quota
System restore is another feature of Windows that helps you restore your computer in case your system is down due to file corrupted or system misconfiguration. Just like the Hibernation feature, system restore does take up space on all your drives. In fact, it can be much worse because it takes up 12% of your disk space by default. To save up space in C drive, you can either disable system restore or reduce the disk space usage allocated for it.
To do so, open up Control Panel and click on System. Then, click on the System Restore tab. If you want to disable system restore, just uncheck the Turn off System Restore on all drives. I do not recommend this though. It is best to reduce the size instead. Click on the C drive in the list and then click on the Settings button. You can reduce the space allocated for system restore by sliding the slider to the left and click OK.
3. Delete old temp files in Local Settings\Temp.
This step is probably one of the most effective steps in helping you recover the most hard disk space. I was able to free up 3GB just by deleting the files contained in this folder.
The location of this directory may vary on different operating systems. Assuming you are using Windows XP, go to the folder C:\Documents and Settings. Double click on the folder where its name is your Username account. Double click on the Local Settings folder. Once in that folder, double click on the Temp folder. Delete all files in the temp folder.
In my case, the location of this temp folder is at C:\Documents and Settings\Kelwin\Local Settings\Temp. If you cannot find the Local Settings folder, that is because the folder is hidden. Just copy the address above, change “Kelwin” to your Username and paste it into the address bar.
4. Lower temp files in IE
Open Internet Explorer. On the menu bar, click Tools and then select Internet Options. On the General tab, click the Settings button under the Browsing History section.
Adjust the Disk space to use amount to something lower. The recommended values are between 50 to 250MB.
5. Disk Cleanup
Open up My Computer. Right click on the drive that you want to free up space, and select Properties. Click on the Disk cleanup button.
After a couple of minutes, you will be shown a list of options where you can take in order to free up hard disk space. The options range from deleting files to compressing old files.
From the screenshot above, you can see that I am able to free up 11GB if I were to select all the listed files to delete/compress. Up to 7GB can be freed if I were to compress old files. That is a lot of space indeed!
6. Moving paging file from C to other drives
Paging file is an area on your hard disk where Windows uses it as if it were a RAM. Usually, this paging file is located in your C drive and can take up to 1 or more GB. It is ideal to place this file in the C drive instead of other drives because it is faster to access it from C. Having said that, this is not a recommended step but it works.
Right click on My Computer and select Properties. Select the Advanced tab and click on the Settings button under the Performance area. Select the Advanced tab and click on the Change button.
The list will display all the drives on your computer and any paging file associated to it. Copy whatever setting on the C drive to the next drive. Click the Set button. Once that is done, select the C drive and click on the No paging file radio button. Click the Set button. Apply the changes by clicking the OK button on all opened windows.
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Bear in mind that even though you are able to install new software into the other partition(s), there are some files that are required to be installed into the C drive. A Windows installation would have taken up a few GB of space. Any common shared files will also be installed into the C drive. Any files kept in the My Documents, My Pictures, My Music and even on the desktop(!) will be stored in the same partition.
As a general guide, it is advisable to allocate at least 40 to 60% of your hard disk space for your C drive. You can use the remainder to install new programs, store files or even backup important documents in case you need to reformat your windows drive.
I hope this post has helped you recover some hard disk space. If you find it useful, kindly spread it along. Thank you.
Cool. Might try some of the steps. TFS!
wads the temp folder for? Issit safe for me to delete everything?
@Kerubin
It should be safe. If you run the Disk Cleanup tool, there is an option there to delete temporary files as well. From what I recall, these files are stored temporary when you are doing stuffs like installing a new program. They should be deleted automatically after that but in some cases there are not.
Good post. Thanks.
Will do that on my older PC.
is there any harm in Moving paging file from C to other drives
Plz Tell
@abdullah: Shouldn’t be a problem. However, I thought it may cause the computer to slow down a little WHEN it needs to do the paging, since the page file allocation is written more towards the outside of the hard disk. A colleague of mine said it shouldn’t affect the speed. I can’t confirm this though.
very informative post keep the good work I was searching to free my hard drive space and came across this one followed your tips and save 2GB space but still my hard drive show 5gb of date store some were in can’t find as I calculated each folder on C: drive only partaion and it come around 25GB but shows on C:/ drive 30GB/90GB so some 5GB is store hidden can find it
great tips. Mostly, i already did that and it really help.
Thanks Dear, i applied all of the step, and its work very well.
Thanks again!
Hi,
Really the above 6 options are very good
i feel these tips will be very useful for me,i will try them,thank you very much
There were a few things you listed that I didn’t know. Thank you so much! I was at only 3% free space on my C drive & now have 8%. That should see me thru until I can tranfer all my files to a new laptop.
Really useful stuff. I was having only 3% of space in my C Drive, now increased upto 7%. Even i have relocated mydocuments,programme files to D Drive.Any more suggestions to increase size of C Drive.
I had looked everywhere for this article,very useful
Many*Thanks!!!
Super helpful.
Excellent. I can reduce more than 1 GB Memory
Here’s extra information guys,try using disk defragment its located in the start menu under Accesories > System tools
hello i m very thankful to ur team as i was able to increase my space on c drive from 15 GB to 19GB.
once agin thanks a lot
thanks for the information it helped a lot
Thanks brother its work, continue thats
it helps us lot.
Thanks brother its work, continue that,
it helps us lot.
Toooo good, unfortunately i alloted only 20gb for ma c drive, and stuck with this this low disk problem, tried many things but din work, when i read this article, i was like will this work coz all temp files, disc clean up n cc cleaner i do it regularly but still same prob.
I was left with only 50-100mb space on c drive and after following all the steps, it increased 3.67gb amazing, Paging technique was too good, but just wannu know will it create any problem for the applications?
Keep updating such kind of articles, thanks to tenthofmarch.com.
Thank You Soooo Much. I can take a sigh of relief now:)
Dont decrease pagging file size ,
at first its increase your pc speed but after few days
your program will not run properly and a notification shown as
“virtual memory low” so dont do this.
Thanks
wwwwwooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwww
itz amazing dude wat an article i am really impressed i reduced 9 gb of space
thnx dude once again
i want to incease the space of c dreive with out effect window
i have 2 partition, c drive is almost full and d drive is not really in use, how to increase the volume from d to c drive?
is it good to clean up compressed old files?
Hey is there any way you can take free space from other drives and add it to c because d and e drives both have over 30gb left but c only has 150mb
hey,
this info gave me a gr8 space…
i was havin 2 gb only but now i am having 7gb
thanx
My c : drive is approximatlly full, I need soft ware to increased its size ( I have large size in D: & E )
I r\tried with easuse 6.5.2 but it failed to perform this opearation ( when I restart the PC to complete the job, after some time it gives me a message that there an error in operation & stop completeing the job)
So, If any one can help me by a nother soft ware to increase the size , pl’s advise.
thanks
Thank you very much. Your information has been very, very helpful. Although I regularly use disk clean up I still found files in the temp folder. Some I was unable to delete, but may be, just may be, it is the web page I have open to follow your fantastic suggestions.
Thank you very much, once again.
These were useful basic tips and helped to increase the space.
Absolutely the right ways to get more space. Great one. =D
that is goood and thanks a lots and sooooooo
Suggestion 3 REALLY HELPED!!! Had only about 160 MB now have 21GB!!!!!!!!
WOW!! im using an old computer, had 20GB max i think.. more for internet surfing.. not downloading; anyway.. im trying to download a game but i was 2 GB short of memory and this freed up at least 2/5 of my over all space, THANKS! was about to buy memory later today lls
Hi, It was really useful. Thanks for helping
very very useful information..! Thanks for helping!
My comp’s just got more space from 400 mb to 1.9 gb..
I wonder what’s eating up the remaining 20gb..
Thanks anyway..! Point 6 helped a lot! =)
God Bless!
thanx…………..!!
GoD BlESs…..U =)
nice to disabled hibernation option…it gives me 3gb space
nyc..
i had a probs (i.e) local disk C waz full….
i tried sum of ur steps…
AMAZING!!
i tried to reduce 130 Kb….
thanx….
bt could u help me wit sum more steps??
plss….
performance is also slow…..
Fabulous steps dude.
earlier i didn’t know about partition softwares as my C: drive was almost full but my D: drive had 100 GB free space so i tried all these steps and i was able to free 15 GB space.
Again thank you very much
What a great advice. I am so grateful to you for writing such an informative article. It really helped me a lot, unfortunately I commit the mistake of making my C drive at 20GB, and was having space less than 1GB now. I followed all of your steps and now the space is 3.19GB. I hope it will not affect the working efficiency.
Once again thank you very much.
With regards
Vikas
what does the maximum size in custom size refers to…i have got only size of 40gb in my c drive..how to write that…
Thanks! Your tips are really helpful!
This is really a good article. I followed all the steps and succeeded to get space in the required drive. I was looking for this kind solution from long. Today I am able to trace your web page.
Thanks a lot.
thanks! it helps me alot.
Thank you, this really helped increase space on c drive.
good one…
thanks for tips…
i feel these tips will be very useful for me,i will try them,thank you very much
does the compress old files in disk cleanup contains any useful data????????? deleteing this file is harmful for my laptop??????????
Excellent advice – by just using tips 2, 3 & 4 I dropped my C drive from 24 GB to 21 GB. That’s a great improvement. Thanks for your assistance.
Very good advice,my disk space doubled!
Wow, I just deleted 1,300 temp files and got back 7 GBs. Thanks so much
The system restore option os absolutely spot on…it freed 4 GB of space on my system…