Running out of space on your SSD? Try this.

Draeger · 14 Mar 2013 at 11:31

Ok, first of all a lot of folk will be aware of this already. However, I wasn't and thought it might help some folk here to recover some drive space on your OS SSD. Mine is a 60Gb Vertex and I was getting a bit low on free space recently so did a bit of housekeeping, cleaning up a bloated My Documents folder etc.

However after Googling it, I found a simple tip that as I said I certainly wasn't aware of. I managed to grab 5 Gb of space back with just a few minutes work. I'll just quote from the article I read this on, hope it helps some folk.

Not only do the NVIDIA drivers not clean up after themselves, they actually create two copies of installation files in different directories on your C: drive. The first are easy to find: after upgrading an NVIDIA driver, old versions are left in a folder called C:\NVIDIA, helpfully marked up by version numbers. These are obvious and easy to delete; for each one that you blitz you get back about 150MB of space.

The second copy is harder to spot. During installation or upgrade the compressed drivers unpack themselves into another directory at C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Installer2 before copying themselves over to Windows’ system folder. Then they leave them there in a complex structure of files and folders that looks too intimidating to delete.

In just a few months of updates, this folder had grown to almost 2GB in size for me, making 4GB total with the C:/NVIDIA folder. One click will purge the entire Installer2 file, with no adverse effects on performance.

bledd · 14 Mar 2013 at 11:46

Safe to delete..

C:\AMD
C:\Nvidia
C:\Intel

Generally, the only things that aren't safe to delete..

Windows
Program Files
Program Files (x86)
ProgramData
Users

DaleTheWhale · 14 Mar 2013 at 13:36

Very handy, have always just left them folders there. I'll do this tonight!

markweatherill · 14 Mar 2013 at 14:06

Thanks for the tip, I wasn't sure but I'll happily delete them now.

Deleted member 77746 · 14 Mar 2013 at 15:32

Take it you guys never looked at an application called WinDirStat?

http://windirstat.info

bledd · 14 Mar 2013 at 15:37

mrbell1984 said:
Take it you guys never looked at an application called WinDirStat?

http://windirstat.info

Although it uses Java /spit-on-floor, I prefer JDiskReport, nicer GUI

Deleted member 77746 · 14 Mar 2013 at 15:41

bledd. said:
Although it uses Java /spit-on-floor, I prefer JDiskReport, nicer GUI

urgh don't like java

Sliver · 14 Mar 2013 at 16:41

Thanks for the tip Draeger, I just got back nearly 5GB.

Draeger · 14 Mar 2013 at 18:04

Good stuff!!. Simple but very effective bit of tidying up.

yashiro · 15 Mar 2013 at 05:34

If you delete the installer stuff in the Program Files folder you will end up with un-installable drivers. Deleting C:\Nvidia is 100% fine. The other folders not so much.

If you do attempt to 'clean up' in this fashion be aware that your next driver install will have to be installed over the top of your current driver to re-instate that installation data.

C64 · 16 Mar 2013 at 01:23

C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download

safe to delete everything in there too it often stores quite a fair bit, it's just windows update stuff

good place to start with a ssd is here http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

turning off hibernation gets you some gb too I think

wazza300 · 16 Mar 2013 at 01:36

buy ....a....bigger.....ssd

hehe,what about all those windows updates? cant stop those

but good work guys,every little bit helps

im on a 60gb ssd myself btw

Deleted member 77746 · 16 Mar 2013 at 11:02

wazza300 said:
hehe,what about all those windows updates? cant stop those

You can, you can turn them off and only install the ones you want to install.

Liquid · 11 Apr 2013 at 15:55

as C64 says turning off hibernate(if you don't use it) saves plenty.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15140/what-is-hiberfil.sys-and-how-do-i-delete-it/

This gave me 12gb back :-)