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I have been having problems with my hard disk space getting filled up more than I think it should, and faster too.

I have Windows 7 with Service Pack 1.

I have two drives, C: and D:. Sometimes C: free space keeps going down unreasonably fast. The only genuine reason why I think it may be going down, is due to my opening too many Chrome tabs. But I realized that a while ago, and have been doing the following two things to hopefully reduce the effect of Chrome tabs on disk space: 1) closing Chrome tabs when done reading them, and 2) rebooting my PC now and then (I try to do it once at least every two days if not every day), so I think the effect of that should be mitigated now. I also run the Disk Cleanup tool often, when I get a low disk space warning from Windows, and even if I do not. Sometimes the disk space in C: seems to get a lot lower, and at the same time the disk space on D: gets higher. Sometimes only the disk space on C: gets lower. I do have an antimalware software installed on my PC (McAfee Antivirus Plus) and update it regularly and run quick scans almost daily and a full scan usually weekly. Apart from the earlier high number of Chrome tabs, I do not think there is any genuine reason (caused by me or any software that I run) for my disk space to keep on getting reduced like this. I don't do any heavy data processing, I don't watch videos much, I mainly use my PC for programming and writing (about programming) and browsing the Web.

Another thing I noticed today: I went into Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Configure advanced user profile properties, for the first time today, and saw that my main user account - called user, i.e. C:\Users\user, seems to be using as much as 8.12 GB of space. Why can this happen? And is there a way to reduce the space it uses? When I open C:\Users in Windows Explorer and then click on the folder called user under it, and do Alt+Enter to check its properties, it shows that it uses over 9 GB of space.

Any suggestions I can try to prevent this disk space reduction from happening? It has been happening for months now, and is a big issue - slows down my work, since I have to frequently deal with it. I had been uninstalling software packages from C: via either Control Panel -> Programs and Features, or sometimes via Revo Uninstaller. But I am running out of packages to install. I have also moved a lot of MB (sometimes GB) worth of data (mainly downloads of software, ebooks, collected over a few years - too much, I know) from C: to D:, but even after doing that multiple times, the space on C: gets full again.

I have over 30 GB of free space on D: at present, but under 1 GB of space on C:, and often, without my doing anything on C:, it goes down to even a few 10s of MB, then I get a warning from Windows that my disk space is low.

Mydnyght Ryder
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2 Answers2

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Windows 7 has a nasty problem of eating up all disk space in the following two folders:

  • C:\Windows\Logs\CBS

  • C:\Windows\Temp

You can delete the contents of both directories without impact. Some files will not be able to be deleted because they are in use. You can skip those, and should not try to delete them.

Additionally, run a Windows Disk Cleanup:

  • Open My Computer
  • Right-Click the drive in question
  • Click Properties
  • Then choose "Disk Cleanup" under the "General" tab.
  • You should additionally click the option to "Clean up system files" which will reveal several more areas that disk cleanup can clean.

After that, if you are still having disk space issues use WinDirStat (be sure to right-click and "Run As Administrator") to get a nice graphical representation of where all the space is used on your drive. Using that information you can decide what to do with the rest of the data that needs to be cleaned up. I would focus on items within your user profile only and on folders identified as "temp" folders.

One last suggestion, if necessary, you could also relocate your pagefile to the drive with more free space.

Appleoddity
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Along with what Appleoddity suggested, you can use other programs to remove unnecessary bloat.

One that I have used for many years as a computer tech, and on my own computers, is CCleaner. There are a lot of settings you can change, so, to me, it feels more flexible and powerful/useful than the built-in Windows Cleanup tool.

Another program by the same maker, Piriform, that I used instead of the Win default, is Defraggler. It can replace the Win defragment utility, and again I feel it works better.

I'm not affiliated with or paid by Piriform, I just know these utilities work well.

computercarguy
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