No matter what size of drive C: you set, no matter how regularly you clean your computer of debris, sooner or later you will definitely encounter this annoying window at the bottom right: “There is not enough space on drive C...”. The reasons for this error in Windows 7 and ways to increase free space on the system disk will be discussed below.
Causes
So, there are several factors that influence the amount of free space on system drive C. The most obvious one is . However, where more space on the system partition they “eat” Windows applications and services that you don't even know about. This includes the browser cache, memory dump files, hibernation mode, and so on, and so on, and so on. No matter how often you perform the standard procedure disk cleanup, it will still be constantly “clogged”. Below we will try to give an exhaustive number of solutions that can significantly free up disk space.
First, let's start with the most obvious way to solve the problem - the standard disk cleanup procedure. To launch the utility, open Computer, right-click on drive C, select Properties -> Disk Cleanup.
Wait while the program calculates the possible amount of freed space. In the window that opens, check absolutely all the boxes. It will be displayed at the bottom right volume of freed space. However, the specified number will not always correspond to the actual amount of freed disk space. This happens because some programs still use temporary files in the background and delete them in this moment impossible.
Click “OK” and in a moment your system disk will be replenished with some free space. If you are not satisfied with the result, move on to the next step.
Cleaning up user files
User files— files and folders with files created by you on the system disk. What are the possible places for “garbage accumulation” on the C: drive? First of all, this Desktop.
To find out how much space files take up on your Desktop, open your Computer and go to Drive C -> Users -> [Username] and find the folder Desktop. Call its properties and see the amount of memory occupied. Ideally, the number should be in kilobytes, not megabytes or, God forbid, gigabytes. Try to make sure that they remain on the desktop LABEL ONLY the programs you need. Move music, movies and other garbage to other local drives.
The next "garbage dump" is folders "Video", "Documentation", "Images" And "Music" In chapter "Libraries" Computer window (in the left panel). Carefully check the contents of these directories and, if necessary, move files to other drives. Storing information in the specified places, in addition, can significantly slow down the system due to fragmentation files.
So, why stop there, let's make room further.
Clearing temporary files
Much more space on the system partition is occupied by files that you don’t even know about. This temporary files, created by almost all running applications. Programs for working with computers especially like to “litter” large data sets- video, audio, all kinds of archivers, etc. Take, for example, the same WinRar, which, when opened, unpacks archives into temporary directories on the C: drive.
So, there are two main folders for temporary files. They are located at the following addresses:
C:\Windows\Temp
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Temp\
All you need is to empty these folders. The contents of the first can be deleted in the usual way using Computer. The second directory is usually hidden from the user, so you can get to it by manually entering the path in the Explorer address bar, or by installing the program Total Commander and turning on display of hidden/system files ( Configuration -> Settings -> Panel contents -> Show hidden/system files ). After deleting files, do not forget Empty trash.
These are the main, most obvious ways to clean up a disk. Now let's talk about additional measures that are not necessary to apply, but can be used to replenish free place gigabytes.
Disabling Windows Update
The purpose was always unclear to me Windows updates. Huge amounts of data that often have no practical use. By default, it is enabled on the computer Automatic update. This means that almost every day the amount of free space is reduced by 200-300 MB.
In response to our problem, we, of course, will not delete already installed updates, but we will free up a couple of gigabytes downloaded to the computer, but not yet installed. But first we need to disable the automatic update feature. To do this we call Computer Properties(right-click on the Computer icon on the Desktop and select the appropriate item). In the Properties window go to Center Windows updates-> Setting parameters. Select from the drop-down list "Don't check for updates".
Disabling Hibernation and deleting the hiberfil.sys file
Hibernation- this is the so-called Sleep mode, - a state when the contents random access memory is written to a file hiberfil.sys on the system disk, and the computer itself turns off completely. After switching on, the reverse process occurs and the Computer starts, keeping all applications that were running open.
Depending on the amount of RAM, the hiberfil.sys file can have a different size, ranging from 1-4 GB. You can sacrifice the Hibernation feature, but you will save a lot of disk space.
To disable Hibernation and delete the hiberfil.sys file, follow these steps:
- Go to Control Panel -> Power Options -> Sleep Mode Settings;
- In the dropdown list « Put your computer into sleep mode" select « Never" and save the changes;
- Open Start, enter the word "cmd" and in the search results run Command line on behalf of the Administrator (right-click on the icon "cmd" and select "Run as Administrator")
- In the window, enter the command powercfg -h off and press ENTER.
After a reboot, there will obviously be more free space on the C: drive.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to add that it is enough effective way Clear free space on drive C: is clearing your browser cache. You can find out how to do this online, but keep in mind that after some time this garbage will appear on the disk again, so do not forget to clean it periodically.
Try to maintain order on your Computer and then you will always know what, where and how much space on your disk takes up. As always, we hope that the article was useful. We write comments, like, repost on social media. networks and share with friends!
Local drive C is very important for your system, especially if you don’t have a second drive on your computer at all. You need to regularly monitor the amount of free space so that you don’t find out about it when you only have a gigabyte or two left. In this article, you will learn several ways to effectively clean up your local drive C, without deleting the necessary programs and files.
How to clear space on drive C - emptying the trash
- Simple but effective method. If you do not monitor the filling of your basket, then most likely it is clogged with a large amount of information. Right-click on the Trash icon and select “Empty Trash”.
- In this way, you can free up several gigabytes of precious computer memory.
How to clear space on drive C - deleting downloads
- All downloaded files are stored by default in the corresponding folder, which is located on drive C. Many of them, perhaps, you have not needed for a long time, but you simply forgot about them. Go to drive C and find the “Users” folder.
- In it, double-click on your name account.
- Now go to the “Downloads” or “Downloads” folder in the English version.
- Most users will be surprised to see how much memory this particular folder wastes.
- Select unnecessary documents and files, click the Delete button. Confirm your intention by clicking on the word “yes”. Using this method, you freed up a few more gigabytes on your local drive C.
How to clear space on drive C - removing old programs
You haven’t used some utilities and programs for a long time, but you also don’t remove them from your computer. In the operating room Windows system there is a special dispatcher that will help you do this.
- Go to Control Panel via Start.
- Select the “Uninstall a program” subsection in the “Programs” section.
- The “Programs and Features” window will open in front of you, in it you can see the entire list of installed software, utilities and programs on your computer. Sort them using the “Installation Date”, “Size” and “Version” buttons in the manager header.
- Once you find an unnecessary program, click on the “Uninstall” field. Uninstallation will begin immediately. As a rule, programs do not take up that much memory, with the exception of games. Still, take this method into account.
How to clear space on drive C - cleaning the Temp folder
- In the Windows operating system, on drive C there are two special folders called Temp. They are used to store temporary files that are needed by some processes and programs only for a short period. This folder itself is not cleaned - it just gets cluttered over the years. Find the first folder at: My Computer – Local Disk C – Windows – Temp. Remove all components from it, if any files are not removed, just skip them.
- Now go to the second folder at a different address: My computer – Local drive C – Users – “Your account name” – AppData – Local – Temp. Please note: if you do not see the AppData folder, a separate article will help you open it.
- Delete all accumulated information. Each individual file in Temp takes up a small amount of memory, but you'll end up cleaning up a lot of space.
How to clear space on drive C - Disk Cleanup utility.
This program is located directly in the Windows OS, and every user can use it. You can clear temporary files, computer cache and many other unnecessary documents.
- Go to “My Computer” and right-click on it. Select the “Properties” line.
- Find the small “Disk Cleanup” button in the window that appears. Click on it.
- Wait a few minutes while the utility analyzes the data.
- Select all menu items on the left by checking the boxes, also click on the “Clean up system files” button, then click “Ok”. The amount of freed memory will be quite impressive.
Special programs for cleaning drive C
The most popular third-party program is called CCleaner, and it will help clear not only the computer’s cache and temporary files, but also all unnecessary data from browsers and other programs.
You can download it on the official website of the developer, or from your sources.
By completing all six steps, you will free up at least a quarter of the memory on local drive C. Remember that it is recommended to use this drive only for system needs, and create a separate drive for your personal files.
As you use Windows, temporary files accumulate on your disk system programs, contents of the recycle bin, old OS recovery images and other data. You can delete them.
In Explorer, right-click on the system drive (usually drive C) and select Properties → Disk Cleanup. In the next window, mark the elements that occupy greatest number location, click OK and confirm deletion.
To erase even more temporary files, including update data and outdated restore points, click Disk Cleanup again and click Clean up system files. Mark the largest objects in the list that appears and delete them. Then go to the Advanced tab, click Clean up under System Restore and Shadow Copies and confirm deletion.
It is especially useful to perform such cleaning after updates, since a large backup copy of the previous version of Windows may remain on the computer.
Browsers and others installed programs Over time, they fill the system with temporary files. Sometimes this data can take up a significant amount of storage space. But you can quickly get rid of such garbage using free utilities like .
There may be large files on your computer that you do not need and are just wasting disk space. Searching for them manually is a thankless task. Moreover, there are programs that analyze the disk and display a list of all folders and files on the computer, ordered by size. Use one of them to find and remove unnecessary objects.
Over the years of using a computer, duplicates usually accumulate on it: accidentally copied pictures, songs downloaded several times, and other objects. You don't need these copies, and together they can take up significant storage space. To avoid searching for them yourself, use one of these to find and remove duplicate files.
Windows 10 comes with a built-in Compact OS utility that can make your system smaller. This happens by removing unnecessary OS elements and compressing the remaining data. This way you can free up to 6 GB on the local drive where Windows is installed (usually drive C). If you're interested, back up your important data just in case and use .
For stable and fast operation operating system Windows 10 must have enough space on the disk where it is located. IN Lately users are increasingly using low-volume ones, installing exclusively the system and programs on them, fast work which are needed. However, over time, there will be less and less space on the system hard drive, and no visible files will appear for deletion. There are two effective ways, how to free up disk space with Windows 10 quickly and without third-party applications - remove “garbage” and “compress” the operating system. In total, this can help free up up to 20-30 GB.
How to clear a Windows disk of temporary files
The Windows operating system “remembers” a lot of data during operation, saving it in the form of temporary files on the disk where it is installed. This could be data about thumbnails of files in folders, temporary files for restoring a previous version of the operating system, “garbage” left after Windows installations, and much more. The user can delete all this information from hard drive, which sometimes takes up tens of gigabytes, using the preinstalled Disk Cleanup utility.
Important: Before deleting any data, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with why it was saved by the system. Most often, when cleaning disks, you can gain space by deleting “Previous Installations” and “Temporary Files” of the operating system. But it is important to understand that without them it will not be possible to return the previous version of Windows if problems arise with the current one. Accordingly, you should delete these files only if you are sure that the operating system is stable on the current version.
To clear your Windows 10 disk of temporary files, you need to do the following:
It will take a few seconds to clear the hard drive of unnecessary information, after which space will be freed up on the drive.
How to free up disk space with Windows using Compact OS
In the Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft has added a new tool whose purpose is to optimize space on the system disk. It is called Compact OS and is intended to be used from the command line. With Compact OS the user can free:
- About 2 GB on a hard drive with a x64-bit operating system;
- About 1.5 GB on a drive with an x32-bit operating system.
When using the Compact OS utility, hard disk space is freed up by compressing system files and universal applications preinstalled in Windows. Microsoft warns Windows 10 users that compressing operating system files using Compact OS may slow down the device. In practice, such a problem is not observed.
On some Windows versions 10 file compression using Compact OS can be enabled by default. To determine whether operating system data size optimization is enabled or not, you need to run and enter the following command in it:
Compact /compactos:query
After entering the command, press Enter. Depending on whether compression is enabled or not, the command line Various messages will appear.
If file compression using Compact OS is not used by the system, you can enable it with administrator rights. To do this, you need to write on the command line:
Compact /compactos:always
After pressing Enter, the command line will display how many files were compressed, how much they weighed before optimization, and how much they weigh after it.
The problem with computer junk causes inconvenience to almost all users year after year. In this article I will tell you how to clean Local Disk C.
If your PC has become noticeably slower, it will be useful for you to clean up unnecessary files and thereby speed up your computer.
To find out how to do it yourself correctly, read the entire article or watch the video at the end of the article.
Introduction
Many people wonder about the slow operation of their computer and spend hours searching for information on the Internet. One of the main reasons is the clutter of Local Disk C. The PC starts to work slower because it is on this disk that the operating system is located, which is responsible for all the actions performed.
As a result of the operating system files becoming clogged, we begin to notice errors in work processes and slow program responses. Imagine using a real-life example: you are running in sneakers or sports shoes to improve your physical fitness. Now take a sack of potatoes over each shoulder and try to run, how’s that? I think the difference will be noticeable, the same is true on the local disk, while the empty one works quickly, a lot of garbage has accumulated and it begins to work slowly.
That is why you should at least sometimes clean up your PC and delete unnecessary files.
Clean desktop and its impact on Local Disk C
Dear friends, first I want to draw your attention to the desktop of your PC, because many do not understand how to use it correctly. And its correct condition lies in its purity.
All files and folders located on the desktop are recorded on the memory of local drive C, so think ten times before throwing music albums and new movies onto it, work correctly now, transfer all data from the desktop to Local drive D or other existing ones, this is significant will make the operation of the operating system easier and free up the memory of drive C. If you need quick access to some programs or files, make shortcuts for them this will be the right way.
Manually clearing temporary, unnecessary files from your computer
Before moving on to this stage, you need to understand a little that when running any programs on a computer, the operating system creates temporary files, even when you are just surfing the Internet, some of the data is recorded as temporary files.
This is actually done to speed up the work, how? Let's say you opened the Odnoklassniki website, the system recorded several large pictures from the site in a folder with temporary files, and the next time you go to Odnoklassniki, the computer does not download information from the site server, but takes several large pictures from the temporary files previously recorded in the folder.
Yes, this is useful, the folder with temporary files “swells” to such an extent that it begins to slow down the PC and most of the memory of Local Disk C is clogged, which sometimes also leads to errors.
To delete these temporary files, you just need to go to the desired folder with these same temporary files and delete everything from there. By the way, don’t worry, there are no system files there and you won’t delete anything you need, feel free to go in and clean it.
To do this, go to the directory:
My computer/Local drive C/Windows/Temp
We went into this folder, circled all the files and deleted them, emptied the trash.
Analysis and removal of old, unnecessary programs, games and files
This section can be divided into two stages. The first is quite simple, it involves removing old, no longer needed games and programs. To do this, simply go to the program control panel and delete those applications that you once installed yourself; when you see familiar names, you definitely won’t get confused.
1. Go to the start menu - panel management programs and components and we see the following window in front of us:
We find programs we don’t need in this window, select them and click on the delete/change button at the top, doing this one by one with each unnecessary application or game. This process will also clear the memory of the local drive C.
The point of the action is to identify the problematic folder or file, and for us these are objects that occupy a significant amount of memory. Not quite clear? I'll explain everything now.
We go to Local Disk C and see folders in front of us, the number may be different for everyone
Now we begin to analyze each folder in turn, first check the volume of the first folder
Our goal is to find out how much memory it takes up on the computer
We looked and saw that the folder takes up only 8.13 MB, we are not interested in this size, we are only looking for huge files that weigh from several GB.
What should I do if I don’t understand anything about file sizes?
If you have difficulty understanding the size of files or do not know how to distinguish between them, then I recommend using my online textbook: How to master a computer from scratch. In it you will find answers to all your questions.
We were a little distracted, but that’s okay, let’s continue, move on to the next folder and also check its weight until you find folders whose volume scares you. Most likely, there will be two folders: Windows and Program Files.
As soon as we have identified a folder that takes up a lot of space, we go to it and also analyze everything that is in it by determining the weight. Eventually you will find files or folders that take up a huge amount of memory on your Local Drive C, copy their name and look on the Internet what these files are and what program they are from, most likely you will be surprised how much junk you will find.
Attention, if you are a complete novice user, do not use this method, just skip it, because in the process you can remove the necessary components or programs, which will lead to disastrous circumstances.
We use the built-in capabilities of cleaning Local disks
The creators of the operating system did not forget about users and initially added to Windows basic capabilities for simplified cleaning of Local disks. This is not always effective, but knowing this method will also be useful, and it will not take much of your time.
To do this, you need to go to my computer, select the local disk to clean and right-click on it and select the properties line.
Now we will see information about the disk in front of us, we need to click on the clean disk button
You will need to wait a while until the program starts, you will see something like this:
When the program starts, you will see a window in front of you in which you need to check the boxes next to the sections that you want to clean, here I just check all the boxes and click OK.
Automatically clean the Cache and Registry using Ccleaner
Now we can relax a little, then the automatic cleaning program will work for us. It's called CCleaner, you can read how to download it correctly and from where in the article on how to clean your computer's registry. After you have installed it, launch it. Click on the cleaning section, first select the Windows section and only after that click the analysis button.
Now we will see in front of us all the files that the program can clean without causing harm to your PC, at the top where it will say analysis completed you can see approximately how much space the program will free up for you. Click the clear button
Reviving or speeding up your computer after cleaning up the mess
After you have done such a huge job, you just need to bring your computer back to life, to do this you need to put all the files on their shelves. This will speed up your computer and save you from some errors. This process is called defragmentation. I recently devoted an entire article to this, which I recommend you read.
Now it’s time to consolidate the knowledge, watch the video in which I myself go through all the stages of cleaning Local Disk C in order. Good luck friends and don’t forget to subscribe to my site’s news, the subscription is a little lower, be literate in everything!