Free up disk space on your Windows PC in 10 ways

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Free up hard drive space on Windows

Before showing you the cleaning methods, it is important to note a few considerations:

• if the disk is a traditional hard disk this is always the slowest component of the computer, even on a latest generation PC, a bottleneck in the speed and power of the system.
• If the drive is a solid state drive or SSD we will have a very fast drive, although often with less space than a hard drive (although these days prices are falling steeply).
• When you have a PC with SSD it is also convenient to keep a hard disk next to it to store personal files, so as to extend the life of the solid state drive (where to install only the system and programs).
• In addition to music and movies, computers are filled with photos taken and repeated with smartphones or digital cameras, collecting many GB of images that take up a lot of space.
• Traditional hard drives are fragile and can break so it is always advisable to have a backup copy of photos and important documents that you absolutely do not want to lose in the event of an accident or breakdown.

For all these reasons, disks, even if they have an increasingly large capacity, are not always sufficient to contain all our data and are inexorably filled with useless data, duplicates or folders full of junk files.
Especially those who have an older computer and do not have a 1 TB (1000 GB) hard drive can learn to free up space for important files and programs by removing the garbage without cluttering the real physical memory of the hard disk.

Clean the disc

Windows includes a tool inside that eliminates temporary files and other unimportant data. To access disk cleaning we open the File Explorer app from the Start menu, go to the This PC section, right-click on the disk to be cleaned, select Properties and finally press on Disk Cleanup, present in the General tab.

In the window that will open we select all the options and press OK ; for a complete cleaning, to delete the recovery points automatically created by the system (except the last one) and to delete the backup copies previous to the last one, press on Clean up system files and go to the new tab to decide what to delete.
As seen above, you can perform Windows disk cleanup in full mode and also delete excess system files. To do this, just create a shortcut on the desktop by giving the command the following target:
% SystemRoot% \ System32 \ Cmd.exe / c Cleanmgr / sageset: 1
I don't recommend selecting the " Compress drives to save disk space " option (unless it's urgent), because the speed of your computer would slow down.
Note that the disk cleanup tool is also capable of erasing the remaining Windows Update files, those downloaded to install Windows updates.
These files, in some cases and especially after an important update of Windows 10, can also occupy 4 GB or more of memory, which must be absolutely freed.
In another article we showed you how to Clean Windows Update and free up 4 or more gigabytes of disk space and how to free up space in Windows 10 by deleting the installation files .

Use Memory Sensor in Windows 10

To prevent the disk space from filling up completely, we can use the memory sensor, as seen in the guide on How to keep free disk space with Memory Sensor in Windows 10 .

This option, found in PC Settings> System> Storage, allows Windows 10 to automatically free up disk space by deleting temporary files, emptying the Trash and Downloads folder at regular intervals (we recommend setting a cleaning every 30 days, so as to always have a fast and ready system).

Uninstall heavy and bulky programs and applications

Some programs are useless and can be removed from the computer, others are useful but too heavy, taking up a lot of space. Since for almost every Windows software, even famous and important, there is always an alternative, it is advisable to remove, if there is no space on the hard disk, these programs and replace them with lighter alternatives. In various Navigaweb articles, lightweight programs for a fast Windows PC have been recommended to replace, for example: Acrobat Reader, Nero, iTunes and others.
The utility to uninstall programs then allows you to free up space by removing those applications never used; to use it, press on the bottom left of the Start menu, open the Settings app, go to the App, then to the App and functionality, then set Filter by to the Size option.

Unfortunately this analysis is not always precise and for some programs there is no information about the size. To uninstall programs quickly and completely there are also faster additional programs listed in our guide on the best programs to uninstall software on Windows .

Analyze disk space

To find out exactly what space is occupied on the hard disk, you can use a hard disk analysis program. These applications scan the disk and graphically and accurately show which files and folders are taking up the most space.
In another article the best tools to see the space occupied by each folder and hard disk of the pc are listed, among which, for example, we can try with WinDirStat.

After scanning the system, WinDirStat shows exactly which folders and file types use the most space. Without obviously touching the system files, you can perform a manual cleaning of the obsolete files by deleting the larger ones that are not needed or transferring them elsewhere.
WinDirStat, analyzing the Programs folder, can provide us with the space that a program is using, so as to decide whether to uninstall it or not.

Cleaning up temporary files

The default Windows Cleanup tool is useful, but it does not delete temporary files used by other programs that are not integrated into the system. For example, the cache of Firefox or the Chrome browser, which can even go to use more than one gigabyte of space on the hard disk, will not be cleared. I remember that the browser cache saves temporary data on the disk to save time when accessing the same websites in the future, but this is of little importance if you need to free up space.
To obtain a complete cleaning of all program caches, we recommend using CCcleaner, a famous cleaner for all versions of Windows.

With it we can delete temporary and obsolete files created by browsers and also by many other software. CCleaner is easy to configure and offers the possibility, without risk, to choose which temporary files to delete (for example, temporary internet files, Office files, various log files, temporary Windows files, etc.)
In another article we showed you how to upgrade Ccleaner with other cleaning rules .

Reduce the amount of space for system recovery

If System Restore takes up a lot of space on your hard drive, you can reduce the amount of disk space reserved for this important Windows feature (not too much though, given the importance of system restore).
On Windows 10 we press the Start menu at the bottom left, we search for the Control Panel, we select System and Security, we press on System and then on System Protection -> Configure .

The less space you assign, the less points will be created automatically. To avoid running out of recovery points but at the same time to avoid taking up too much space, we choose a value between 5% and 15% as space usage, also based on the capacity of our hard disk or SSD (higher on mechanical disks, less high on SSD).

Do not save files from OneDrive to PC

If you are using OneDrive in Windows 10, you can make sure that your stored files don't take up disk space. To do this we open Windows Explorer, go to the OneDrive folder from the left column and then right click on the files or folders inside OneDrive (or select them all and right click).

Now we remove the check mark from the item Always keep on this device, to ensure that they do not take up space on the PC disk, while remaining available for use.

Find duplicate files

You can use an automatic program capable of analyzing the disk and finding which files are duplicates .
Because of the software for transferring photos from cameras to computers, it is very likely that we have duplicates of photos and images, which take up unnecessarily space. To learn more, we recommend reading the guide to the best programs to erase duplicate images and duplicate photos on your computer automatically .

Use compression of programs and folders

Although this is a somewhat extreme remedy, you can compress your program folders and personal files in Windows in a number of ways:

• Compression of specific files and folders
• The compression of the NFTS hard disk is the oldest mode, which however has a small side effect, slowing down the overall performance a bit
• Compact OS in Windows 10 to recover disk space is a hidden tool that instead allows you to compact the whole system in one go.
• CompactGUI is a very powerful and special program for compressing program and game folders, without any loss of performance (but it is a non-Microsoft software).

Extreme options to save disk space

These are some tricks explained in a dedicated article that really allow you to save space on the hard disk, but will disable important Windows features. If you are not an expert or if you don't need to, you may want to ignore them, but if you desperately need disk space, they can help.
The article that allows you to get a lot of space is Save space on disk C: in an extreme way with 10 tricks .

Conclusions

By carefully following all the procedures described, we will be able to effectively free up disk space, so that we can store new large files without having problems related to running out of space, especially if we have an SSD smaller than 500 GB.
If the space is always too little on the computer, we can get more space by reading about the types of system files that can be deleted to reduce Windows .
If instead we fear that large files are present in system folders or hidden folders, we invite you to read our article on how to find and delete hidden cache files on Windows PC .