Is it enough space.

dearelliot · 16 Mar 2023

Using windows 10, on desk top pc, I have 100GB of space with a bit over 83% used. Is 16% enough space?
I am old and for the most part, have very little knowledge about my PC.
If 16% isn't very much what could I do that is something simple to add more.
I'm thinking of adding Libre Office but I am concerned that by adding more I might cause myself problems.
I would like to go through what I have and clean out some of the junk I have accumulated, but when I try to do this, I cant tell the good stuff from the junk.

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My Apps and feature use 32GB
Temp files 10GB
Other 8GB

If that matters

dalchina · 16 Mar 2023

Hi, if, for example, you experience a major Win 10 upgrade, Windows.old is created on your disk, about the same size as your Windows installation. It's recommended to allow at least 30Gb free for that.

That said, assuming you currently use 22H2, and given that Win 10 support ends in Oct '25, and upgrades have typically been via an enablement package rather than a full upgrade, it's possible that may never happen again.

Or you could just stay on your current build.

Upgrading your PC to a larger disk is relatively easy and wouldn't cost a lot.

Turning now to how space is used on your PC: This program gives a good view- the cushion map at the bottom lets you immediately see any unexpectedly large folders or collections of files:

One example might be hyberfil.sys - hibernation. If you don't use or need hibernation or fast startup- you can disable that and save quite a bit of space.

Turning now to normal PC usage.
Free space on C: is essential for normal use. If there is too little free space, your PC will become sluggish.

Personal data
It may be that you have accumulated a lot of data- if you never access some which occupies significant space- consider storing that on a different disk.

Considering freeing up space: see (from the searchable Tutorials section):
Free Up Drive Space in Windows 10

Hope that gives some ideas.

Try3 · 16 Mar 2023

Use this to increase free space
Disk Cleanup - TenForumsTutorials

Since you have a Dell, take a look at C:\Dell where they used to allow a lot of old, unnecessary files to accumulate [but have now improved]. Right-click on that folder, select Properties & decide if it's big enough to be worth worrying about.

As dalchina said, there are also other methods.

Denis

Malneb · 16 Mar 2023

dearelliot said:

Using windows 10, on desk top pc, I have 100GB of space with a bit over 83% used. Is 16% enough space?

My Apps and feature use 32GB
Temp files 10GB
Other 8GB

Well as long as the drive is not showing as red when viewing it in "my computer" which happens around 10% free space i think then realistically it is fine to go right up to this point.
Computers are about managing things so free space is there to be used until it is not is the mantra so basically you should use it if you need to until you need to free some up for other things.

10gb temp is quite large and this is a dump folder that should get wiped periodically, temp files should be removed when an app is done but often they linger behind.

Some things to run that should net you some considerable space out the gate, open a cmd window and type out these commands consecutively.

cleanmgr /VERYLOWDISK

erase %temp%\*.* /q

You can also configure and run storage sense and reconfigure it to work on a smaller basis i think its normally set to 30 days by default which is a long time especially if you computer is in constant use.

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Just to add onto dalchina's post using a program like dalchina is showing in the image to sort by biggest flie/directory types and then if you understand what is important and what is not then you can free up much space this way also, you will be surprised the file system hold a lot of trash like much of it is not needed.

Outside of all this then you really need to do some research if you don't know because there is quite a few tricks, i just displayed some basic first points as these will not dmg anything.

dearelliot · 16 Mar 2023

I appreciate the help thank you