Free up space on system (C) drive

Even during times of terabyte(s) sized hard drives you can come across situations when C: drive if full and you have to free-up some space no matter what. Besides obvious solutions such as deleting large files from desktop and so on, you can try following:

Warning: Some of these tips are not for beginners and make sure you know what you are doing.

  • Uninstall unnecessary programs
  • Delete temporary files. This can be done:
    • Manually
    • Using built-in Windows Disk Cleanup utility
    • Using third party software such as CCleaner
  • Move Page File to another disk
  • Disable Hibernating
  • Disable System Restore and Previous Version
  • Disable Shadow Copies (servers)
  • Check size of Windows Search Index file at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\Windows.edb
    Rebuild search index if it’s too large: Control Panel > Indexing Options > Advanced > Rebuild
  • Delete server pack and updates uninstall folders. These are hidden system folders such as:
    C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$
    C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB2653956$
  • Not recommended but you can temporarily move C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles to another location.
    In this case you may want to update path values in registry in following location:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup

 


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