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Question

hard disc storage

Sep 11, 2015 11:52AM PDT

Disc space keeps getting eaten up in spite of removing programs and cleaning white space. How do I find, identify and eliminate unnecessary files and storage. I have scanned for duplicate and empty files with little improvement. Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: hard disc space
Sep 11, 2015 12:03PM PDT
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Answer
check space allocated for restore points
Sep 11, 2015 12:21PM PDT

Also remove all but the last 2-3 restore points.
Use Windows DiskCleanup program
Many of the $NTUninstall........... files in Windows folder can be removed, sometimes blue colored, but keep this one $hf_mig$ because it keeps a list that update checks I think. Sure don't want it all to download again.
Empty Recycle Bin
Run a Search for all files over 10 MB in size, aka 10000 KB. See if any of them can/should be removed.
Run a search for all "temp" and "*.tmp" folders and files.
Empty all browser caches
Empty all email Trash folders
If you don't use hibernate, then turn it off, which should get rid of the hiberfile.sys, but if not, delete it afterwards. (ignore on W8 unless you turn off Fast Boot).
Remove any backup Service Pack files if you aren't going to revert to before it was installed.

http://www.optimizingpc.com/optimize/deletefiles.html

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hard disc storage
Sep 12, 2015 1:23PM PDT

Thanks. Using the 3 posts, I was able to remove 4 GB. I was unable to find some of the tools in windows 8.1.

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Re: remove 4 Gb
Sep 12, 2015 1:35PM PDT

Who cares about 4 GB on the usual 1 TB (1000 GB) hard disk computers come with nowadays? It only is important if you have a 64 GB SSD as your c:-drive.
What couldn't you find in Windows 8.1?

Kees

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hard disc storage
Sep 14, 2015 11:40AM PDT

I was able to remove 605 GB using Treesize. All of the storage was used up In Kaspersky Internet Security 2014. Thanks.

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Answer
The usual culprit is System Restore images.
Sep 11, 2015 12:45PM PDT

A percentage of your C: drive is set aside for these so that each time another one is taken, more free space disappears until that amount of the C: is used. You can control this via the System applet of the Control Panel.
However I'm compelled to point out that I was in a computer store yesterday and saw that they're selling 1 TB (Western Digital) drives for $39. So if you're having to constantly manage your hard drive space, maybe you should just invest a few bucks and get a bigger hard drive.
`
Good luck.