Program that frees up hard drive space

To see which files are using the most space:. Select File Explorer from the taskbar and find the files you want to move. Under This PC in the menu on the left, select a folder to see what files are saved in it.

If there are files you no longer need on your device, you can either delete them or move them to an external storage device like a USB drive or an SD card. Note: If you delete any files, remember to empty the Recycle Bin to completely remove them from your device and free up space. To move photos, music, videos, or other files that you want to keep but don't use very often, consider saving them to an external storage device like a USB drive or an SD card.

You'll still be able to use them when the drive is connected, but they won't take up space on your PC. Select File Explorer from the taskbar and go to the folder that contains the files you want to move.

Select the files, then select Cut on the ribbon. Navigate to the location of the external storage device you connected, then select Paste. Instead of saving all your new files to the default drive, you can save some of them to a different drive that has more free space.

Open Storage settings. For each content type, select a drive from the drop-down menu. If the drive you want to use isn't listed there, make sure it's connected to your PC. You can save space by turning on OneDrive Files On-Demand, which stores a smaller placeholder file on your hard drive instead of the full-size file that's stored in your OneDrive account in the cloud.

You'll be able to get to your OneDrive files from your PC without having to use up hard-drive space downloading full-size versions of them all. Sometimes a virus or other malware can consume significant hard-drive space by corrupting your system files. If you suspect your PC is infected with malware, use an antivirus program like Windows Defender to run a virus scan and cleanup. If this doesn't fix the problem, you might need to reset your PC.

This is also recommended if your attempts to free up drive space trigger particular error codes that you need help resolving. The following questions concern low disk space and Windows Update specifically. Learn more about Windows Update. When you select Fix issues , you'll be informed about how much additional space is needed. Learn how to free up space to install Windows updates.

The total free disk space your device requires to complete an update varies. Learn about the difference between a feature update and a quality update. You need disk space to download the update, download new versions of any optional features and languages that are currently installed, and to apply the update. Additional space is temporarily required to support removal of the update typically for 10 days.

This space can be reclaimed after the update is completed. Note: For devices with reserved storage, an update will first use the reserved storage space before using other disk space. For more info, see How reserved storage works in Windows. The space required to complete a feature update depends on two factors: which update path is followed and the size of optional content and other updates that apply to your PC when the feature update is installed. Windows follows three different feature update paths, depending on the amount of disk space currently available.

Windows automatically tries to complete more of the update process in the background while you use your PC. This significantly reduces the time your PC will be offline or unusable during the update, although it might temporarily use more disk space to complete the update. Learn more about our efforts to reduce offline time during updates English only at this time. For PCs with limited free space but still enough to complete the update automatically.

Windows will automatically optimize for reducing the amount of free disk space required to install the update. This will result in a longer offline install time. For PCs that don't have enough space to automatically install the update. Windows will prompt you to free up disk space or use external storage to temporarily extend the storage on your PC.

Across each of these update paths, the total amount of free disk space required will vary, depending on the optional content installed and other updates that apply to your PC. For example:. Optional features. Many optional features available for Windows are pre-installed or acquired on demand by the system, or manually by you.

Languages installed. Windows is localized into many languages. Step 3. This process will take around 20 minutes. When it finishes, you get 2GB around disk space. By viewing its properties, you will see it takes quite a lot of disk space image attached. It also builds up unnecessary files like old versions of system components over time.

Note that you should not delete the entire WinSxS folder or delete some files from it, as this might severely damage your system, making your PC impossible to restart or update. However, you can do the followings to remove the unnecessary files. Set to view by Category and select " System and Security ".

Step 4. Step 5. In the middle panel, right-click " StartComponentCleanup " and choose " Run ". After the above trying, if your hard drive space keeps disappearing, you may consider the rest workarounds.

With this feature enabled, you'll be able to get to your OneDrive files from your PC without having to download them all, thus, freeing up a lot of disk space. Click the OneDrive icon on the taskbar and log into your account. Open your OneDrive folder, select all the files and folders, bring up the context menu and choose " Clear space ".

In this way, all files are kept in the cloud, freeing up disk space Windows. If you have numbers of pictures, audios, videos and other large files saved on the drive, consider moving them to another location such as an external hard drive to free disk space. Open File Explorer , enter each partition and pick up the ones you want to move.

After that, go to the Home tab on the ribbon, select Move to and then Choose location. Select your external hard drive from the location list and then select Move. Instead of saving all your new files to the same location, save some of them to a different drive to free up disk space. Under More storage settings, select " Change where new content is saved ".

For each content type, select a drive to save new files from the drop-down menu. Reading here, we hope you have resolved Windows disk cleanup. But if partition bar gets red from time to time, you still have the last choice…. Hard drive upgrade is the most effective way to remove " low disk space warning ". If you have the budget to purchase a larger hard drive, you can choose any of the following methods.

And luckily, MiniTool Partition Wizard can help you all. Free Download. This way will copy the source disk entirely to the larger one, enabling you to extend each partition size at the same time. Select the disk to be copied and choose " Copy Disk " from the action panel.

On the next interface, select the larger drive as the target disk. When you launch WinDirStat, you can tell it to scan all local drives, a single drive like your C: drive, or a specific folder on your computer.

It also serves as a legend, explaining the colors that appear in the bottom of the window. You can mouse over a square in the treemap to see what file it represents. You can also click a file extension in the list to see exactly where files of that type are located in the treemap view. In WinDirStat, you can only drill down through the directory list—not graphically through the treemap view.

WinDirStat seems more practical, but SpaceSniffer does have the best graphical view. It runs as a portable application, too. As in the other applications here, you can right-click files or folders in the application to delete or open them.

While there are paid TreeSize Personal and TreeSize Professional applications, these just add bonus features like the ability to search for duplicate files, which other tools do just fine.

You can scan and visualize your disk space using the free version of TreeSize with no problem. Windows 10 has a storage usage tool that may help you in some cases. Use Google Fonts in Word. Use FaceTime on Android Signal vs. Customize the Taskbar in Windows What Is svchost. Best Smartwatches. Best Gaming Laptops.

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