Hard drive appears full - Windows 7

Brum Man · 29 Jan 2012 at 17:23

So I have Windows 7 installed on a partition with a capacity of around 40GB, which when setting up the partition thought would be plenty of space.

However, although there is only Windows installed on this drive it's almost full, with it apparently taking up 39GB. Now, I have no games etc installed on my computer and when I look at the individual properties of all the files I can see on the C: drive (including Windows, Users etc) they add up to around 17GB.

So what's taking up the rest of the space and why can't I see it? Is there anyway to get this space back?

Deception · 29 Jan 2012 at 17:23

disable hibernation should free up some space. Run CCleaner too.

smithy83 · 29 Jan 2012 at 17:25

could be the page file also

Speedy Pete · 29 Jan 2012 at 17:32

I use WinDirStat to see whats eating up the space

andy_mk3 · 29 Jan 2012 at 17:35

Turn off system restore also.

Deception · 29 Jan 2012 at 17:55

Speedy Pete said:
I use WinDirStat to see whats eating up the space

Thats the program I was thinking of! Just couldnt remember the name.

Orcvader · 29 Jan 2012 at 18:02

+1 to disabling hiberntaion and system restore, should free up about 10gb RAM. Why 40gb though? I's very limiting once you install other software, and from the sounds of things you installed it on a partition, so is the actual drive bigger?

chaparral · 29 Jan 2012 at 19:15

40GB Eeeeeeeeeeek that no way near enough for a windows 7 partition

You be fighting against running out of disk space all the time...

Grenache · 29 Jan 2012 at 20:04

Also, you can delete the files which were downloaded as windows updates. Once you have applied the updates and rebooted, delete the contents of \windows\software distribution\download.

Deception · 29 Jan 2012 at 21:34

chaparral said:
40GB Eeeeeeeeeeek that no way near enough for a windows 7 partition

You be fighting against running out of disk space all the time...

Agreed, especially if you keep the computed updated as well.

Brum Man · 14 Jul 2012 at 13:35

Yes I agree that I set the partition far too small, in hindsight I wouldn't have set one up at all.

I'll look to reinstall at a later date, but having tried all of the above and not really freed up much space, is there anyway to delete/enlarge a partition without doing a fresh install? I can move all the data off the other side of the partition to another hdd so not worried about losing anything on the other part of the disk, I just don't want to reinstall yet!

Rroff · 14 Jul 2012 at 13:39

I would suggest not turning off system restore it can be invaluable in saving time getting a system up and running again.

james.miller · 14 Jul 2012 at 13:41

Brum Man said:
Yes I agree that I set the partition far too small, in hindsight I wouldn't have set one up at all.

I'll look to reinstall at a later date, but having tried all of the above and not really freed up much space, is there anyway to delete/enlarge a partition without doing a fresh install? I can move all the data off the other side of the partition to another hdd so not worried about losing anything on the other part of the disk, I just don't want to reinstall yet!

the disk management console can expand partitions.