Easy ways to gain more hard-drive space

Topic

New Reply

	LANGALIST PLUS Easy ways to gain more hard-drive space
	By Fred Langa Hard drive getting full? Windows’ built-in tools might be all you need to gain more elbow room. Plus: Avoiding foistware at CNET’s Download.com and similar software libraries, and a selection of reader-recommended PDF-splitting and -merging tools.

---

The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/langalist-plus/easy-ways-to-gain-more-hard-drive-space/ (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

[/tr][/tbl]

Reply | Quote

Replies

Use Windows own search or the free and fabulous Everything (http://www.voidtools.com/) and search for lang. That will turn up language folders labeled lang, language, languages, etc. Open each folder and select English (or your native language), or files ending in en, enu, enus, English.ini, English.lng, English.txt, or similar files that are US English. and then select Edit (up top), Invert selection, then press the delete key. Do not delete any files that are clearly not language files.

Skip system folders, files related to audio, video, Internet connections, or files and folders you’re not sure of. Some programs with dozens of languages but not English can usually have the entire folder deleted. In some cases deleting language files may save only a few KB, but in quite a few others you can delete several MB. Multiply that by the number of programs and utilities you have and it could total far more than you expect.

Reply | Quote

In the case in the article, the Windows 7 partition is too small for a fully configured Windows 7 installation to operate normally. Windows 7 32-bit requires up to 40GB of hard drive real estate, and 64-bit requires around 60GB in my experience.

If you don’t have that much room to spare, it’s time to upgrade your hard drive.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

Of course all of the well known ‘tools’ in Windows look familiar in your rehash.
But you didn’t answer the question or really solve the problem. He needs to repartition the drive and could use a free partition management utility such as EASEUS (http://www.partition-tool.com/product.htm). Increasing his C partition by 30GB is a no brainer and for sure he won’t get that with the goofy MS apps…
I used to use Partition Manager but it disappeared. I have used EaseUS products with no problem for several years.
SITTH
Al

Reply | Quote

Your best option is a bigger C: drive, as others have already recommended.

You may be able to claw back a little space to tide you over using the disk cleanup tool and/or some manual cleanup. Have a look in C:WindowsSoftwareDistributionDownload – this can sometimes fill up with orphaned files from Windows updates, etc. and can be emptied. The worst that can happen is that Windows has to re-download any outstanding updates. Moving the pagefile from C: to D: will also buy you a few GB – go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced system settings -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual memory and set it to “System managed” on D: and “No paging file” on C:. It’s generally safe to ignore the warning about a minimum size on C: but if you’re worried, just set an additional small fixed-size pagefile on C: to satisfy Windows. If you don’t use hibernation on your PC, you can also reclaim a few GB (equal to the amount of RAM you have) by turning the hibernation facility off – open a command prompt as administrator and type “powercfg -h off”.

I would strongly recommend against using the “Compress this drive” option, especially on the C: drive, unless you’ve exhausted/ruled out all other options, such as moving your user files onto another partition/drive, disk cleanup, partition tweaking, etc.

NTFS compression seriously degrades the system’s performance – not only does the system have to decompress everything on the fly (which is, admittedly, less of an issue with a fast modern processor), but the way it is implemented effectively makes every compressed file 100% fragmented and there is nothing defragmentation software can do about it. (The structures that keep an “index” of where everything is on the disk, instead of saying something like, “The file ‘letter.doc’, starts at block 123456 and goes on for 8 blocks,” have to say, “The file ‘letter.doc’, compressed from 8 blocks to 4, is in blocks 123456, 123457, 123458 and 123459.” This is much less efficient, of course.)

Hope this helps,
Stephen

Reply | Quote

Hi Fred,

Liked the ideas about using Disk Cleanup but the ‘Clean up system files’ button you mentioned wasn’t there. I’m using Win7 64 bit and I have enabled UAC (the UAC solution was suggested in a couple of Google searches… didn’t work for me).

Cheers, Andy.

Reply | Quote

Hi Fred,

Liked the ideas about using Disk Cleanup but the ‘Clean up system files’ button you mentioned wasn’t there. I’m using Win7 64 bit and I have enabled UAC (the UAC solution was suggested in a couple of Google searches… didn’t work for me).

Cheers, Andy.

It could be that there aren’t any System Files which can be safely deleted on your PC. More likely, you need to allow the (I assume) Administrator Account to make changes to System Files. I found that the Hidden Administrator account (instructions) gives me more access to System Files than using the Administrator Account I created when setting up Windows 7. No UAC restrictions in there, plus nearly unlimited permissions and access.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

If you run Disk Cleanup as administrator the “Clean up system files” button will not be there because you’re already doing it. That’s what the button does; run it as administrator.

Bruce

Reply | Quote