Compacting C Drive

[DonH]

My C Drive seems to be getting fairly full. I see there is an option to 'compress drive to save space'

Not sure how much it will save but are there any drawbacks from taking this option?

 

[SpyderTracks]

My C Drive seems to be getting fairly full. I see there is an option to 'compress drive to save space'

Not sure how much it will save but are there any drawbacks from taking this option?

You don’t want to compress the c drive, not a good idea. Generally the c drive should only be used for OS and Programs. If you’ve got any data or cloud drives on there, just move them to another drive.

You can find out what’s using your storage with windirstat which is free:

WinDirStat - Windows Directory Statistics

windirstat.net

 

[DonH]

I don't usually put any data on this drive. Ill try windirstat.

Thanks

 

[FerrariVie]

I don't usually put any data on this drive. Ill try windirstat.

Thanks

What is the size of your C drive? Do you have other drives that you could maybe install windows on?

The problem of being short on storage for the C drive is that you will not have enough virtual memory available and that might affect your performance, especially if you're short on RAM as well.

 

[DonH]

Hi

Its 128GB.

Thanks but I have manage to strip out a lot of items that has made a considerable difference.

 

[NoNastyNick]

If you're not too bothered about system restore points, you can delete them too.

Open CMD as admin and type the following:

VSSADMIN list shadows

This will show you all the shadow copies / restore points for the drive.

To delete all, you'd type vssadmin delete shadows /for=c

To delete just the oldest, vssadmin delete shadows/for=c /oldest

 

[ubuysa]

I would never recommend compressing the entire system drive, there will always be a small performance hit because of the extra CPU cycles needed to uncompress every file before use. If you're short of space on your system drive and you don;t use hibernation then turning that feature off will save a sizeable chunk of disk space (equal to your installed RAM). Open an elevated command prompt and enter the command powerdfg -h off.

 

[FerrariVie]

I would never recommend compressing the entire system drive, there will always be a small performance hit because of the extra CPU cycles needed to uncompress every file before use. If you're short of space on your system drive and you don;t use hibernation then turning that feature off will save a sizeable chunk of disk space (equal to your installed RAM). Open an elevated command prompt and enter the command powerdfg -h off.

Just a small correction: powercfg -h off