Hard Drive Space

Welcome to the forum. us the new storage space it will show details and safely clean and you can set it to run on its own

Those folders can be deleted safely ( https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...3-ee435570f413 ), although I'd delete only the softwaredistribution.bak for now.

You can also run Disk Cleanup. It should offer to delete "Temporary files" among other categories well explained.

The folder "%temp%" sometimes collects a lot of deletable stuff. To check it manually press windows+R and type it there (w/o the quotes), press Enter and a Explorer folder will appear with the contents of %temp%. See if there's too much stuff there the following way: press backspace and the upper folder will appear with the folder named Temp inside. Right-click on it select properties and see if it's excessively large. You can delete its folders and files the following way: select all the items (Edit -> Select all) and press ctrl-Delete (if you only press Delete it will move the files to the Recycle Bin and it won't release the HD space). Windows will ask if you're sure, click Yes. For every prompt that says that a given file cannot be deleted etc click on skip it.

Download and run TreeSize. It has a free version and paid ones with superior features, I also found a portable version and I'm using it, although Idk if there's an official portable version. You can see there if you have files or folders with abnormal size or that they shouldn't be there.

If after this cleaning you don't get enough free space (basically, if you don't find an "abnormal reason" why you current disk usage is say 110 GB when it should be like 70), you should consider a larger drive. I use 240/256 GB ones for my Windows installs. 128 GB would be enough for me, but not for everybody.

Use Wiztree (free) to get a great picture of how space is used on your disk. It helps you see large files/folders easily, and if you use the colour coding, highlight or group particular file types too.



There have been other threads on this kind of topic.. please feel free to search tenforums for more ideas.

As suggested, use Windows disk cleanup (%windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe)
On the bottom select clean system files.

Run disk manager from cmd
cleanmgr.exe /verylowdisk

Temp folder as mentioned is a hassle it has potential to get very unwieldy and it backlogs junk that is useless.
consider setting a daily task to run for it.

Code:

start box:
"C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe"

Command to execute:
/c del /q /s %temp%

Outside of that Majority of space is used up by the user folder on C drive generally.

- if you use that drive for other stuff like holding programs and what ever else which is not ideal, its best to min max C:\ drive for windows only and try to use other drives for everything else.

Even consider moving the user folder over to another drive because it gets quite large over time. This is involved though you would need to look up a guide for that because it to much to try and explain.
Its also an area you want to clean often because it will be holding lots of junk you no longer need. You need to know or learn what files to identify though.

Utilize the programs mentioned in here and it will help you identify at glance problem areas.