Windows 10 is consuming excessive disk space.
Windows 10 is consuming excessive disk space.
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.
Windows 7 isn't an option since it reaches end-of-life in just two months. Windows 8.1 remains functional but support is limited to minimal software. Windows 10 consumes significant storage, requiring around 30GB free space even for updates every two years. The SSD capacity is insufficient for a boot drive. The best alternative would be to build a custom ISO that keeps only essentials and Internet Explorer.
32 gigabytes isn't that much. Windows works just fine, but downloading games will take a while. I might purchase a cheap 1TB hard drive and save your games there. Ofcourse, it will have slower loading times.
Find Disk Cleanup in the start menu and remove outdated Windows updates. However, 32GB isn't sufficient anymore; consider upgrading to a 120/250GB drive.
I also handled the system files as an admin. Updated my prefetch settings and cleaned %temp% and temp too.
It seems you misunderstood the message. You might want to consider purchasing a larger SSD instead. A good deal could be available during Black Friday.
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.
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.
I don't have Hibernate enabled in the shutdown settings, so it seems it's already off. I'm sorry, I didn't understand this part. What should I do? I usually review the extracted files and delete any I find. I also ran a quick check by enabling hidden files and folders, then checked their properties. Their sizes are: Program Data 2.25 GB, Windows 15.7 GB, Users 2.28 GB, Program Files (x86) 1.9 GB, Program Files 99 MB. About 2 GB is reserved for paging files, totaling 22 GB. Based on this, I should have at least 7 GB free space. Edited November 14, 2019 by Blind X