Hardrive space NVidia graphics drivers.

bitfenix

bitfenix

bitfenix

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Hi

I'm running windows 11 home,

My graphics cards NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070,

My hardrive is a Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB (SSD).

With all the NVIDIA graphics card driver updates every month that are 700mb + ill not have enough space and maybe need to upgrade to a 1TB NVME.

My available hardrive space -

hardrivespace.jpg


Is there a way to free up room the driver updates?

Thanks, David
 
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Windows has a built in disk clean up function.

If you start typing disk clean up in that search bar at the bottom it will come up as an option. It will scan your computer for junk files, one of the options is "device driver packages". This may get rid of what of the files you are trying to
 
Finners said:
Windows has a built in disk clean up function.

If you start typing disk clean up in that search bar at the bottom it will come up as an option. It will scan your computer for junk files, one of the options is "device driver packages". This may get rid of what of the files you are trying to
Click to expand...
Thanks shows up 4.95GB of device driver packages.
 
Download tree size and see what is taking up all the space

www.jam-software.com

TreeSize – Official Download

TreeSize is a disk space analyzer for Windows with customizable file search and several exporting and reporting possibilities. Download for free today!
www.jam-software.com www.jam-software.com

free version will be enough, I use the portable version which does not require it to be installed.
 
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Windows does keep some of the old drivers to help you rollback in case you experience problems with newer drivers. As mentioned above, run Disk Clean-up now and again to remove older drivers. Just make sure the driver is stable on your PC first though before running cleaning up old drivers.

If you've 374 GB of free space, that's easily enough space for nearly 400 driver updates - by which time you'll have upgraded the graphic card anyway. But cleaning up old drivers every few months will help keep your drive space free.
 
The installed nVidia drivers won't keep taking another 700MB or more each time you install an update - they'll largely replace existing files with some small creep over time. You might find that Windows and/or nVidia in the c:\NVIDIA\ folder might retain a certain number of older versions of the driver though which can take up additional space.
 
I use WizTree instead of Treesize, same things basically though just a different view:

gsm4ng9.png


The Nvidia folder inside C root is where Nvidia defaults the installer files for drivers if you do it outside of NV App, otherwise it cleans up after itself.

You will also find that a chunk of your SSD space is being used by the pagefile as well as System Restore Points. The default drive space allocated to System Restore is quite high, and you can manually reduce the pagefile size if you have enough RAM (32GB+) as it's unlikely that the system will actually use the pagefile, though one does need to /exist/ else some apps fail to work as expected.

The directory visualiser tools will show exactly where all the space is being used up.
 
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+1 to WizTree, I found it scans the drive significantly faster too.

As above, the updates don't add 700mb every time you update, it replaces old files so overall size should remain roughly the same. Windows may keep older drivers in case you want to roll back, but disk cleanup can clear that out. Then there's C:\NVIDIA you can manually clear out but Nvidia's installer usually does that for you.

Not to mention you don't need to update the drivers every month. I usually only do it if I start having issues (sometimes after a new Windows update, or a new game for better compatibility).
 
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