My C drive is full; what can I delete?

GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz QueenMountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
edited September 2012 in Science & Tech
Hello darlings,

My laptop is currently set up so that my hard drive is divided in two; a C drive for windows, and a D drive for everything else. I've found that my C drive has gotten impossibly clogged, although I do not save anything to it. I have considered reformatting the laptop and making the drive bigger, but I'd really prefer not having to do that right now. So, I'm trying to figure out what I can delete or move from C to make more space.

I did this before with my big PC, and I ended up screwing up the permissions, so I figured I'd see what all of you thought first. I ran WinDirStat to get an idea of what's on my drive.

Here's an album I did with screenshots, let me know if you want any additional ones.

http://imgur.com/a/1wRNP#0
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Comments

  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    Nothing, 30GB is not enough space for C:

    Grab a copy of Parted Magic, boot it, shrink your D: and expand your C:

    EDIT: To be fair, you might be able to clean some space up by cleaning up running Disk Cleanup... but really, expanding your C drive is the better way to go IMO.
  • SignalSignal Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    Why is your Windows file 25 GB? I suggest exploring that folder a bit. Might find some bloat in there.

    Nevermind, I now see that it's an album. Multiple pictures and whatnot. Found this on the winsxs folder:

    http://www.ghacks.net/2010/07/24/the-winsxs-folder-explained/

    Is your C: partition only 30 Gigs? Might want to use something like Partition Magic to increase the partition size.
  • LincLinc Owner Detroit Icrontian
    Try CCleaner (assuming that's still a thing)
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    @Thrax set up my PC for me, and determined the size of the folder. He's pretty computer nifty, so I just said "okey" and then went and lit something on fire in TF2. So this partition magic is a thing?! And I don't have to reformat?!
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    I've been running a 30GB partition on Windows 7 for years. That WinSxS folder is about 4x the size it should be.

    But yes, resizing the partition is the fastest fix.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    Thanks for the info about the WinSxS folder guys, I'm going to read through that article and delete some stuff. I may also make the partition a little bigger, but I'd like to cut down on crap I don't need anyways. :D
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    Dat shwaip advice. Do it nao.
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    Thrax is a skilled dude who keeps things lean, and for that dude 30GB is fine, but for a 'normal' user I would recommend at least 60GB for the OS partition.
    ardichokeCliff_Forster
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    Do what shwaip said. winsxs (literally "Windows side by side") is Win's solution to "DLL-hell" as it used to be called. In XP it was a lot smaller. Removing things that have been superceded and are no longer in use can be beneficial from time-to-time.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    CB said:

    Thrax is a skilled dude who keeps things lean, and for that dude 30GB is fine, but for a 'normal' user I would recommend at least 60GB for the OS partition.

    HOW DARE YOU CALL ME NORMAL :D

    Cliff_Forster
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    relative to Thrax, of course.
    Cliff_ForsterGnomeQueen
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    Of note: my Winsxs folder is almost 9GB. Shwaips fix does not work if you don't have "backups" of the SP files, it just fails with an error. Will have to try something else, here anyway.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    it's a good first thing to try.

    you can't willy-nilly delete things from the sxs folder, even if they appear to be duplicates. you can also try uninstalling programs you don't use - supposedly windows will automatically clean up the folder as you uninstall.
  • SignalSignal Icrontian
    My winsxs is 19.4. Not sure if that is winning or losing. Either way, mine is bigger.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    Just ran it on mine for shits and giggles. dropped from 9 to 7 GB. This is a pretty fresh install of windows though.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    Win partition 40GB, winsxs 11.5 here. 40 has always been enough for me as long as shitty programs don't try to install to C anyway.
  • SignalSignal Icrontian
    I should mention this is my work laptop, so they probably all sorts of compatibility crap bloating it.
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    Do I just put what Schwaip said into a command box? Because I did, and it's confused.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    Uninstall Reddit from C:\ to free up space.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    GnomeQueen said:

    Do I just put what Schwaip said into a command box? Because I did, and it's confused.

    you need to open the cmd box as an admin. then type:

    DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded

    then hit enter. took a few mins for me to run it.
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    DISM command pulled winsxs down from 12GB to 7.9GB on my system. Not bad.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    You can run DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded from an elevated command prompt (i.e. to make sure, you can run cmd with a right-click run as admin or type cmd into run prompt then paste that in so you can see output
  • GnomeQueenGnomeQueen The Lulz Queen Mountain Dew Mouth Icrontian
    I got "Error 87: The SpSuperseded option is not recognized in this context."
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    Just run cleanmgr.exe, it does the same thing except you have to manually check the "service pack files" checkbox
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    No, it doesn't do the same thing, the DISM will do more, but it can't if there are no backups.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    GnomeQueen said:

    I got "Error 87: The SpSuperseded option is not recognized in this context."

    think this means you typed it wrong (:
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    I hear all the cool kids are deleting {a crucial windows folder}.
    Zuntarshwaip
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    GnomeQueen said:

    I got "Error 87: The SpSuperseded option is not recognized in this context."

    Didn't work for me, either.

    This suggests that pre-service pack backup files have already been removed.
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    I've had a constant struggle with keeping Windows happy on my 40gb partition. Assuming I've already deleted SP1 backup files, what else can I do to trim Winsxs? Mine is 9gb.

    My C:\ drive was so full I wasn't able to install any updates until I recently got desperate and compressed my AppData folder. Then today I run WinDirStat and noticed something odd: a 4gb page file on C, when I had moved the page file to D over a year ago. Apparently Windows never deleted it.

    My next laptop won't be partitioned. What a pain.
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