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Question

Free Up Disc Space

Jun 16, 2019 5:45PM PDT

I have a HP ProDesk 400 G2 Mini desktop with a 2.5 GHz i5 processor 4GB Ram running Windows 7 Pro. I changed the original C drive to a 250GB SSD. Recently I noted there was only 15GB of free space on the drive. Using the TreeSize program I found that the System Volume Information folder was a large user of space. I went into System Protection and deleted all the old system restore points and now I have 28GB of free space. However, the folder is still showing 66GB of which I have reserved only 6GB for restore points. Is there anything else that can be deleted in this folder? By the way, the separate Windows folder takes up 44GB of space which I understand.
Another surprise was to find that One Note files take up 23GB of space. I have very limited information on One Note, about 5 or 6 tabs with a few names in each tab (I used to use Info Select where I kept various pieces of information). Is this level of disc usage normal?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Why not the old fashioned way?
Jun 16, 2019 10:39PM PDT

Here when I needed to clear that space I would turn off System Restore then turn it back on.

There's also some extra cleanup I can do in Disk Cleanup but not once do I do this manually in say File Explorer.

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Deleted Restore Points
Jun 16, 2019 11:09PM PDT

As I indicated I had deleted all my restore points. I assume that is the same as turning off System Restore and turning it back on. The 6GB of reserved space would still remain of course. I had already used Disk Cleanup which generally doesn't provide much extra space unless you have large files in the Recycle Bin.
Any comment on why One Note is using up so much space?

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I don't use One Note.
Jun 16, 2019 11:41PM PDT

But it's likely files that are synced.

As to the same. Not in my experience. Turning it off and on again does a nice deep SR folder cleanup. I take it there is some reason you are adverse to this method.

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Turned Off System Restore
Jun 17, 2019 12:07AM PDT

The only reason I didn't do it is that by manually deleting all my restore points I achieved the same result. However, I have turned off System Restore and turned it back on. Of course, nothing changed in the status of disc space usage because I had already deleted the restore points.

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If you turn SR back on
Jun 17, 2019 12:42AM PDT

It creates a restore point and it can be quite large so you'll have to turn it off and see what remains. In rare cases you have to clean it out another way. I used to use Linux to do this but haven't seen SR folders (the folder you noted up top) to be out of control for years.

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Magic?
Jun 17, 2019 11:29PM PDT

Bob - I don't know if your recommendation to turn off System Restore and then turn it back on was the cause but something magical has occurred. My System Volume Information folder has reduced to 199MB (it was 66GB before) and I now have 94GB of free space on my 250GB SSD. Everything works fine so I trust nothing of significance changed.

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Thanks for the report.
Jun 24, 2019 9:54AM PDT

And I want to write that this is actually a typical result of turning it off and on again.

Long ago I would have thought to use Linux to dig into SR's folders but today I use this easy method.