Windows 10 Eating up too much Disk Space

[Blind X]

Hi, everyone.

 

How ya'll doing?

 

Ok so I will jump straight into it. Actually I bought a used 32GB ssd about a month ago because it was really cheap, like really very cheap (from ADATA I think). And so I thought that it should do the job if I just use it as a boot drive for Windows 10 on my other PC. So Yeah I did the installation (Build 1903) and everything went great like super fast boot times as what you would expect from a SSD paired with Windows 10 and I had about 10 Gigs free after I was done with the Installation. Just to keep things on the safe side so that the disk won't fill up, I disabled the Windows Update from services.msc (yeah nothing too important is on that pc so its fine with the updates off). Also I changed the default Installation Directory to the desired partition on my hard drive in the Registry Editor. If anybody wants to know what I did there here is what I changed,

 

CommonW6432Dir                 C:\Program Files\Common Files
ProgramFilesDir                      C:\Program Files
ProgramFilesDir (x86)             C:\Program Files (x86)
ProgramFilesPath                   %ProgramFiles%
ProgramW6432Dir                  C:\Program Files

 

CommonFilesDir                     C:\Program Files\Common Files
CommonFilesDir (x86)            C:\Program Files (x86)\Common

 

 

I changed all these directories so that no software, literally no software gets installed on my boot drive. I don't know about the Common Files Directory but I changed it too as I though that some software have their data stored in these directories. All that done and The Windows Defender stopped working so I figured out my own solution for this. I copied the files from C:\Program Files

and C:\ Program Files (x86) to the directory I changed and Boom it worked like charm.

 

Everything was going well. I even Installed some old games on that PC as it does not have that much of a powerful card. Games like GTA 5, Far Cry 4, Xenoverse 2, Battlefield 1. Also a few Software like the Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro CC and did some simple video editing for Youtube videos. Like just literally copying the Intro and Outro with the Gameplay I recorded and Exporting the file at 720p. Nothing too much.

 

But I didn't have any idea that my C drive was filling too fast. And now after a month I am sitting at a point where it says '0 Bytes Free', it takes forever for the system to Boot, and the desktop screen turns pale yellow however the mouse pointer seems to be pure white, IDK. Also an annoying Pop-up Message that the Disk is low on space. The screen remains yellow until I have opened and closed any game once. But after that everything works fine. However I am annoyed with the face that I have to wait 10 minutes for the system to boot and become usable and run a game at the startup for the screen to turn normal.

 

Also I tried Disk Cleanup with cleaning the System Files as an administrator, nothing is in my Recycle Bin and cleaned prefetch and all sorts of temporary files.

 

Can anyone with the knowledge please tell me what have I done wrong or is it not recommended to use a 32GB SSD as a Boot Drive. Also if Windows 10 is too much I can even switch back to Windows 7 idc, as long as I have a usable experience. Or am I to see same sort of things after a month again even with the Windows 7 with updates off.

 

 

Any help will be highly appreciated,

 

 

Regards.

[NelizMastr]

Windows 7 is out of the question, as it's going EOL in exactly 2 months. Windows 8.1 is still supported but barely in terms of actual software supporting the OS still. Windows 10 is just a space hog, Microsoft demands 30GB free on the OS volume even to install the bi-yearly version updates (1709/1803/1809 etc.). I'd say the SSD is simply too small, even for a boot volume.

 

The only other option you have is to create a custom ISO that removes basically everything but the bare essentials and Internet Explorer.

[GenericFanboy]

32 gigs really isnt a lot. Windows is fine on it, but if you download games it'll be filled in no time. Could buy a (cheap) 1TB HDD. and store your games on there. ofcourse having slower load times.

[DoctorNick]

Disk Cleanup (search in start menu) delete old Windows Updates. But yes 32gb isn't really enough these days, might like to swap it out for a 120/250gb. 

[Blind X]

1 minute ago, DoctorNick said:

Disk Cleanup (search in start menu) delete old Windows Updates 

Tried that. Also cleaned system Files as an admin. Cleaned my prefetch too and yeah %temp% and temp also.

[Blind X]

2 minutes ago, GenericFanboy said:

32 gigs really isnt a lot. Windows is fine on it, but if you download games it'll be filled in no time. Could buy a (cheap) 1TB HDD. and store your games on there. ofcourse having slower load times.

Nothing is installed on my boot drive except for the OS. All games are installed on the hard drive.

[GenericFanboy]

Just now, Blind X said:

Nothing is installed on my boot drive except for the OS. All games are installed on the hard drive.

Oh my bad read that wrong. You should probably just buy a bigger ssd in the first place. Maybe on black friday you can get a good deal.

[Blind X]

3 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

Windows 7 is out of the question, as it's going EOL in exactly 2 months. Windows 8.1 is still supported but barely in terms of actual software supporting the OS still. Windows 10 is just a space hog, Microsoft demands 30GB free on the OS volume even to install the bi-yearly version updates (1709/1803/1809 etc.). I'd say the SSD is simply too small, even for a boot volume.

 

The only other option you have is to create a custom ISO that removes basically everything but the bare essentials and Internet Explorer.

I don't really care its end of life tbh as I said there is nothing too important and Windows 8 doesn't suit my taste thats why it I am not going back to it. All I care is that pc is usable for lite editing, web browser and a few games I mentioned as far as my C Drive doesn't gets filled.

 

Also, if you could guide me on how should I create a custom ISO and will that do the job for me, it would be a real help

Thanks again.

 

 

[porina]

If hibernation is enabled, consider disabling it. I think the command is "powercfg /h off" but note this will also disable fast start (which I normally disable anyway).

 

Consider moving the swap file off the boot drive to another drive. Windows sometimes complains if there is no swap file at all on boot drive, but you can leave a small fixed amount on boot, but make the bulk on other drives.

 

Both AMD and nvidia GPU drivers can leave a ton of data lying around such as older versions after updating driver. As they're hundreds of MB each, it adds up quick. An easy win to to make sure installer files are not left on boot drive. More advanced is to remove the Windows cached older drivers. Good luck with that. I haven't done it in a while. Manual deletion is a pain and might not be 100% safe. Full DDU before update might be a way but I haven't done that personally.

[LunaP0n3]

32GB is hopelessly small in this day and age. 250Gig SSDs are becoming dirt cheap these days, and this article from HowToGeek notes that WIndows 10 may reserve storage space to ensure Windows can update itself.

Also, one thing to note is that SSDs tend to slow down as they get full, as they have to do more work to overwrite data. If you do upgrade, leave 10% of the usable capacity aside to allow the drive to maintain peak performance.

This video from LTT may help for when you go shopping:

 

[Blind X]

11 minutes ago, porina said:

If hibernation is enabled, consider disabling it. I think the command is "powercfg /h off" but note this will also disable fast start (which I normally disable anyway).

I don't have the Hibernate option in the Shut Down Windows so I guess it is already off.

11 minutes ago, porina said:

Consider moving the swap file off the boot drive to another drive. Windows sometimes complains if there is no swap file at all on boot drive, but you can leave a small fixed amount on boot, but make the bulk on other drives.

I am sorry, I didn't get this part. What should I do here?

11 minutes ago, porina said:

Both AMD and nvidia GPU drivers can leave a ton of data lying around such as older versions after updating driver. As they're hundreds of MB each, it adds up quick. An easy win to to make sure installer files are not left on boot drive. More advanced is to remove the Windows cached older drivers. Good luck with that. I haven't done it in a while. Manual deletion is a pain and might not be 100% safe. Full DDU before update might be a way but I haven't done that personally.

Yeah right, and I do keep a check on the extracted files and as soon as I see one I delete it. Also I just ran a quick check with enabling the hidden files and folders and check the properties of all the folders including the hidden ones, here are their sizes

 

Program Data             eats up 2.25 GB

Windows                     eats up 15.7 GB

Users                          eats up 2.28 GB

Program Files (x86)    eats up 1.9 GB

Program Files             eats up 99 MB

 

Also about 2 gb is reserved for the paging files and that all adds up to 22GB. So I should atleast have 7 GB of free space according to this but I don't know what is going on.

Edited November 14, 2019 by Blind X

[Blind X]

8 minutes ago, LunaP0n3 said:

32GB is hopelessly small in this day and age. 250Gig SSDs are becoming dirt cheap these days, and this article from HowToGeek notes that WIndows 10 may reserve storage space to ensure Windows can update itself.

What if the Windows Updates is turned off? Will it still reserve space for the updates?

 

Also I am not living in Europe or North America. I am from Central Asia and tbh SSDs are quite expensive here. I got this one for around you can say $7, and this is what I meant when I said really cheap. Not in a mood of spending any money on this pc but looking for a solution that can help me get things normal with some tweaks. Thank you.

[porina]

36 minutes ago, Blind X said:

I don't have the Hibernate option in the Shut Down Windows so I guess it is already off.

I am sorry, I didn't get this part. What should I do here?

 

C:\>dir /a /os
 Volume in drive C has no label.

 Directory of C:\

14/11/2019  09:50        16,777,216 swapfile.sys
14/11/2019  09:50     1,342,177,280 pagefile.sys
14/11/2019  09:50     3,362,496,512 hiberfil.sys
               5 File(s)  4,722,355,713 bytes
              20 Dir(s)  115,754,926,080 bytes free

Above is part of the directory listing if you're familiar with command prompt. /a means show all files, and /os is just to sort by size. This is from my work laptop for example.

 

The hibernation file is, as name implies, used for hibernation as well as fast start data. Just check it isn't there, or if it is, disable hibernation as described earlier.

 

The pagefile is the other space hog, and is used to store data if it isn't needed in ram to help keep that free. It can be moved to another drive. Especially if you have a lot of ram, it isn't so important but I would still want to keep some available. To change where it is, and how big it is, go to System Properties, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory. 

 

 

Currently I have mine set by the system, but you can manually move it off boot drive to another drive. I'd suggest creating a new one on another drive, and after that, you can set a fixed smaller size on the boot drive to free space on that. Hit ok, it'll probably ask you to reboot and done.

[Kilrah]

You don't need to have a pagefile at all on the boot drive, yes it'll complain and warn you that it won't be able to save debug information in case of a BSOD but that doesn't matter to most people so you can just continue anyway.

 

32GB is ridiculously small even for Win7. Had a tablet with that, it worked but it's literally Windows and a couple of small programs and that's it. 

 

Windows for example keeps a copy of the unintstaller for all programs, some programs do it poorly so the "uninstaller" they register is the entire setup file, I have one that literally eats 1GB to never be used again unless I uninstall the program one day...

[Blind X]

Sorry for the late reply, I was attending a Class.

8 hours ago, porina said:

 

C:\>dir /a /os
 Volume in drive C has no label.

 Directory of C:\

14/11/2019  09:50        16,777,216 swapfile.sys
14/11/2019  09:50     1,342,177,280 pagefile.sys
14/11/2019  09:50     3,362,496,512 hiberfil.sys
               5 File(s)  4,722,355,713 bytes
              20 Dir(s)  115,754,926,080 bytes free

Above is part of the directory listing if you're familiar with command prompt. /a means show all files, and /os is just to sort by size. This is from my work laptop for example.

 

The hibernation file is, as name implies, used for hibernation as well as fast start data. Just check it isn't there, or if it is, disable hibernation as described earlier.

Wasn't able to open Command Prompt in C:\ directory but there was a option to open open PowerShell so I used that. The command to show all the files in PowerShell is '-force' i.e, 'dir -force' and yeah I found a Hibernation file there. So I used the command you previously mentioned to disable it and the file was gone. Thank you so much for the help. It freed up 1.5 GB of Space, yeah ain't that much but still now the drive can atleast breath.

 

Thanks again.

 

8 hours ago, porina said:

The pagefile is the other space hog, and is used to store data if it isn't needed in ram to help keep that free. It can be moved to another drive. Especially if you have a lot of ram, it isn't so important but I would still want to keep some available. To change where it is, and how big it is, go to System Properties, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory. 

 

 

Currently I have mine set by the system, but you can manually move it off boot drive to another drive. I'd suggest creating a new one on another drive, and after that, you can set a fixed smaller size on the boot drive to free space on that. Hit ok, it'll probably ask you to reboot and done.

OK, I know about this thing and I kept my settings to 'No paging file' as it only eats up space and ain't that useful but once I had a error that the System is low on memory so I turned it back on.

 

Its already on a other drive so no worries here.

 

I wonder if the space will still fill up soon because with one and a half GB of free space, things are back to normal except for that yellow screen issue (idk) what caused it. But the system isn't that slow on boot so I can deal with it.

[Blind X]

7 hours ago, Kilrah said:

You don't need to have a pagefile at all on the boot drive, yes it'll complain and warn you that it won't be able to save debug information in case of a BSOD but that doesn't matter to most people so you can just continue anyway.

Yeah its on the other drive and not on the Boot drive.

7 hours ago, Kilrah said:

32GB is ridiculously small even for Win7. Had a tablet with that, it worked but it's literally Windows and a couple of small programs and that's it. 

Really? What if I follow the same procedures like changing the default directory, disabling Windows update, turning Hibernate off and disabling the Virtual Memory aka; page file. Will it still not be enough for the Windows 7 only?

 

7 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Windows for example keeps a copy of the unintstaller for all programs, some programs do it poorly so the "uninstaller" they register is the entire setup file, I have one that literally eats 1GB to never be used again unless I uninstall the program one day...

OK yeah, I found a folder named as 'Uninstaller Information' in the Program Files folder on the boot drive but its empty and occupies no disk space. Though am not sure if this is what you are talking about.

[GoodBytes]

On 11/14/2019 at 5:40 AM, Blind X said:

I don't have the Hibernate option in the Shut Down Windows so I guess it is already off.

No. Hibernation is on by default. It is used for the Fast Startup feature (beside Hibernation itself, and the feature that hibernates the system after the system has been put to sleep for an extended period of time (can be disabled or configured in the power options)). Turning it off will result in slower boot time than normal (on a normal system where the drive isn't at 100%), but free several GBs.

 

You can use a free software to analyse your disk and visually see what consumes space so that we and you, don't have to guess anymore.

My suggestion is Space Sniffer: http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/ (Download Page: http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/download_alt.html)

What I like about it, beside doing a  fine job, is that there is no setup. You just simply extract and run the executable (run as Admin to allow it to scan all system directories). This makes it great to put it on a USB flash drive., and you can just plug it to any system and run it and analyse the disk.

 

 

[Kilrah]

Nice, I still use the old Spacemonger 1.4.0 but that tends to crash quite often. 

Find the animations in Space Sniffer unbearable though.

[Blind X]

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

No. Hibernation is on by default. It is used for the Fast Startup feature. Turning it off will result in slower boot time than normal (on a normal system where the drive isn't at 100%), but free several GBs.

Yeah I turned it off in cmd and got 1.5GB of space free just by doing that.

 

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

You can use a free software to analyse your disk and visually see what consumes space so that we and you, don't have to guess anymore.

My suggestion is Space Sniffer: http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/ (Download Page: http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/space_sniffer/download_alt.html)

What I like about it, beside doing a  fine job, is that there is no setup. You just simply extract and run the executable (run as Admin to allow it to scan all system directories). This makes it great to put it on a USB flash drive., and you can just plug it to any system and run it and analyse the disk.

Oh WoW, This is one great software. It just did the job like the way I wanted to. Though I have disabled the page file on Drive C but still there was a file named pagefile.sys which was again occupying around 2 GB so I deleted that. Now the Drive Bar has turned Blue again as it has 3.5 GBs of free space.

 

Thanks for the help.

 

However I think I will still be switching back to Windows 7 as I have to solve this yellow screen issue and Windows 7 isn't that much of a space hog.

[homeap5]

Is it really worth to work with 32gb ssd that will fail soon? It's quite old ssd assuming it has only 32gb. Don't waste your time - is worth more than 120 gb ssd.

[Blind X]

5 hours ago, homeap5 said:

Is it really worth to work with 32gb ssd that will fail soon? It's quite old ssd assuming it has only 32gb. Don't waste your time - is worth more than 120 gb ssd.

The SSD's health is absolutely great and the speed is what I would expect from it. The fact is you can even get a 1tb flash drive but the soul purpose of 32GB of SSDs were to act just as a boot drive AFAIK. So there is no point why I shouldn't care.

[C2dan88]

On 11/15/2019 at 7:30 AM, Blind X said:

However I think I will still be switching back to Windows 7 as I have to solve this yellow screen issue and Windows 7 isn't that much of a space hog.

Maybe you have Night Light enabled?

Click Start > *type in*  Night Light

[Blind X]

5 hours ago, C2dan88 said:

Maybe you have Night Light enabled?

Click Start > *type in*  Night Light

Oh thanks, discovered a new feature that way but unfortunately that wasn't the fix.

I have solved this issue by disabling and enabling the 'Hibernation' so now my screen is also back to normal. However the Hibernate feature is now turned on so its around 2GB free now for the boot drive.