Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

storage

Mar 10, 2016 8:01AM PST

how do i find out what is causing my C drive to fill up? Has 762 MB of 68.2 GB and I keep getting a message I'm running out of space. I don't see any large files. How do I tell which extensions are ok to delete?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Clarification Request
Confusion of your numbers
Mar 10, 2016 8:31AM PST

Do you mean you have only 762 MB of a drive capable of 68.2 GB? That would be low. If you have only 762 MB used, I'd wonder what OS you are running. It would need to be before XP if you're running Windows.

- Collapse -
(NT) Yes! I'm using Vista
Mar 10, 2016 9:36AM PST
- Collapse -
Use Windows "disk cleanup"
Mar 10, 2016 11:15AM PST

It doesn't do the best job but you can manually remove .temp files and such. If you don't use hibernation, you can turn off that feature and that may help some. If you've collected a lot of downloads and have old pictures and such kept on the drive, move them to an external. I agree that a larger drive is the best idea. Fifty bucks gets you 500 GB these days and it's hard to find mechanical drives smaller than that anyway.

- Collapse -
Answer
There are tools to find it.
Mar 10, 2016 8:24AM PST

The usual is system restore but today, that's half the smallest size HDD I see today being fitted. My recommendation is 240GB minimums for drive C.

OK. Try this. Turn off System Restore and turn it back on. Then run disk cleanup. What's the free space now?

-> Worth noting. I'm seeing a lot of newer Windows users that don't know that Windows is not self maintaining. They didn't live through the early days and just need a little assist on how to work with Windows.

- Collapse -
Also,
Mar 10, 2016 9:05AM PST

After over a month of doing the Windows 10 Upgrade through Windows Update , I deleted the windows.old file and reclaimed around 15 GB of space on my HDD using the Disk Cleanup tool.

I wonder if the OP did the upgrade too ?