Dual hard drives - space issues

Flaevius

Flaevius

Flaevius

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Guys,

I'm having an ongoing disk space issue which quite probably has an easy resolution, but which I would greatly appreciate some advice for.

Purchased a new build from OCUK at the end of last year with dual hard drives; a 256gb SSD for performance, and a 1tb HDD as the storage. Thought that would be sufficient but I'm having constant issues with low disk space on the SSD (less than 1% available). All my space-heavy stuff is already on the D:drive HDD (ie music and photos) and backed up to a further external HDD too. On the problematic C:drive SSD the apps & games folder appears to be the main culprit, taking up 170gb.

So far I've been reticent to move stuff around too much, perchance I delete something important, but this is now a major irritant. What is the simplest way to get this apps & games folder/content to sit on the D:drive? Or, even better, to ensure everything not system-critical sits on the D:drive?

In settings, 'change where new content is saved' all apps/docs/music etc are auto-set to save to D:drive. But it doesn't seem to be happening. The latest two apps, one sits in the x86 folder for example, and I don't want to start fiddling around there without knowing what is and isn't safe to delete/move. The other is in the AppData folder also on C:drive.

Can anyone help a brother out here with an 'idiots guide to'?
 
Last edited:
Flaevius said:
Guys,

I'm having an ongoing disk space issue which quite probably has an easy resolution, but which I would greatly appreciate some advice for.

Purchased a new build from OCUK at the end of last year with dual hard drives; a 256gb SSD for performance, and a 1tb HDD as the storage. Thought that would be sufficient but I'm having constant issues with low disk space on the SSD (less than 1% available). All my space-heavy stuff is already on the D:drive HDD (ie music and photos) and backed up to a further external HDD too. On the problematic C:drive SSD the apps & games folder appears to be the main culprit, taking up 170gb.

So far I've been reticent to move stuff around too much, perchance I delete something important, but this is now a major irritant. What is the simplest way to get this apps & games folder/content to sit on the D:drive? Or, even better, to ensure everything not system-critical sits on the D:drive?

In settings, 'change where new content is saved' all apps/docs/music etc are auto-set to save to D:drive. But it doesn't seem to be happening. The latest app sits in the x86 folder for example, and I don't want to start fiddling around there without knowing what is and isn't safe to delete/move.

Can anyone help a brother out here with an 'idiots guide to'?
Click to expand...

When you install an app or a game, during the installer it defaults to the C:\Program Files, simply change the destination to D:\ "folder of your choice" and that's where it will be installed to, I use Steam and Origin for my games, I have changed the library destination to the D: so all my games are automatically installed, there, I have 2 x 250gb nvme drives, drive 1 has Windows and programs on it, currently 208gb free, drive D is also a 250gb nvme drive and has only games on it, 4 in total and currently has 56gb free, then I have a 3tb western digital mechanical drive which has all my music, movies, back-up's etc on it.

Not sure if its possible to move apps etc that are already installed, you may have to just simply uninstall them and reinstall to the D drive.
 
It's difficult to tell; I only have four Steam games installed and none return a value within the apps & games folder to get an impression of how space heavy they are. Thanks for those suggestions though, I have already started to move the SteamApps folder over to D:drive.

Most of the items in the folder are stuff that comes pre-packaged; NVidia drivers, Audio drivers, Apple app support, and a myriad of little apps. Or items that don't have a move or uninstall option, such as Microsoft photos. The most resource-heavy item I have added myself is iTunes at only 400mb, a couple of others at just under that, and not a whole lot else (perhaps this does indicate that Steam is the main leech).
 
Download Treesize, free version, will show you where all the space has gone.

Games are often huge these days! Also relocate all your standard folders, pictures, downloads, documents etc to your 1TB drive.
 
chroniclard said:
Download Treesize, free version, will show you where all the space has gone.

Games are often huge these days! Also relocate all your standard folders, pictures, downloads, documents etc to your 1TB drive.
Click to expand...
This. I'm assuming Treesize is like SequoiaView, a pretty old but handy piece of software. Really helps you understand what's going on on the drive, and pinpoint problem files / do general obsessive maintenance :D
 
Thanks for your input all.

Stripping out Steam and the four games and moving them across to the D:drive freed up 60+GB, which will be more than enough longterm. That 'move install location' tool recently added to Steam was a godsend @Armageus.
 
It may still be a good idea to check what's going on. Windows 10 should not use anything like that amount of space.
 
Do you use fraps at all?
This is a long shot but it has stung me before.
The default key to activate screen recording in fraps is sometimes the same key for quicksave in games, this resulted in me having 100GB+ of random game recordings.
 
Robin Gregg said:
Have you swapped the Page file to the D drive instead of the C will get you some space back on your system drive?
Click to expand...


Don't do this. You want the page file to be on your SSD. If it's on the mechanical drive anything that does need to access it will run with HDD like performance instead of SSD performance whilst it's accessing the data.

If you aboustlely must set it to a fixed size matching your RAM rather than windows allowing it to grow, but you really want to keep it on your SSD where possible.
 
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